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FOUNDED  BY  JOHN  D.   ROCKEFELLER 


THE  INCARNATION  AND  MODERN 
THOUGHT 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED    TO    THE    FACULTY    OF    THE    GRADUATE    DIVINITY    SCHOOL 

IN    CANDIDACY    FOR    THE    DEGREE    OF 

DOCTOR    OF    PHILOSOPHY 

(DEPARTMENT  OF  SYSTEMATIC  THEOLOGY) 


BY 


CARL  DELOS  CASE 


•    Ujv 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
1908 


ZTbe  TUniversits  of  <Ebtca0o 

FOUNDED  BY  JOHN  D.  ROCKEFELLER 


THE  INCARNATION  AND  MODERN 
THOUGHT 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED    TO    THE    FACULTY    OF    THE    GRADUATE    DIVINITY    SCHOOL 

IN    CANDIDACY    FOR    THE    DEGREE    OF 

DOCTOR    OF    PHILOSOPHY 

(DEPARTMENT  OF  SYSTEMATIC  THEOLOGY) 


BY 

CARL  DELOS  CASE 

11 


^Ii3UAJfT^* 
OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
1908 


Q.3 


COPYRIGHT  1908  BY 
THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 


Published  May  1908 


Composed  and  Printed  By 

The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

Chicago,  Illinois,  U.  S.  A. 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 
CHAPTER  I. 
CHAPTER  II. 


CHAPTER 
CHAPTER 

CHAPTER 


III. 
IV. 


PAGE 


II 


CHAPTER  VI. 
CHAPTER  VII. 
CHAPTER  VIII. 


The  Logos  in  the  World — Divine  Immanence  . 

The   Logos   in   Humanity — Divine    and   Human 
Kinship 

The  Logos  in  Humanity — Race  Solidarity 

The  Logos  in  the  Individual — The  Evolutionary 
Process 

The    Logos    in    the    Individual — Psychological 

Principles 

Jesus  and  the  Logos 34 

Jesus  and  the  Father 38 

Jesus  and  the  Holy  Spirit 41 


178168 


INTRODUCTION 

Referring  to  the  attitude  of  the  Ritschlian  school  to  the  Nicene 
Christology,  Scott,  in  his  book  on  the  Nicene  Theology,  says :  "The 
burning  focus  of  this  whole  controversy  and  of  all  historical  criti- 
cism of  it,  is  the  Incarnation  of  Christ."  Indeed,  outside  of  the 
Ritschlian  school,  the  central  place  in  all  Christian  systems  is 
occupied,  not  simply  by  the  Incarnation  itself  as  a  fact,  but  by 
some  christological  explanation  of  the  fact.  The  Christology  of 
the  theologian  of  today  is  the  center  of  his  scheme  of  Christian 
doctrine.  It  determines  his  view  of  God,  man,  and  the  universe; 
his  theology,  anthropology,  and  cosmology. 

There  is  a  tendency  in  many  of  the  christological  systems  as 
taught  today,  to  minimize  the  philosophical  elements;  nor  is  this 
tendency  without  beneficial  effect.  To  emphasize  the  "ethical  appre- 
hension of  Jesus,"  to  reproduce  the  "moral  pictures"  of  Christ,  to 
proclaim  thought  inferior  to  life,  to  describe  dogma  as  a  human 
product,  has  helped  to  restore  the  vigor  of  life  to  theology. 

One  result  of  this  tendency  has  been  an  added  emphasis  on  the 
ethically  correct  Christian  life.  "Religion,"  says  Max  Miiller,  "is  a 
perception  of  such  manifestation  of  the  Infinite  as  produces  an 
effect  upon  the  moral  character  and  conduct  of  man;"  but  men 
have  been  more  occupied  in  contemplating  "moral  character"  and 
"conduct"  than  in  analyzing  the  "perception."  This  is  by  no  means 
an  entirely  new  feature  of  Christian  thinking.  It  was  Clement  of 
Alexandria  who  was  attracted  to  Christianity  by  its  lofty  ethical 
teaching  and  by  the  fruits  which  it  bore  in  the  practical  transfor- 
mation of  the  life.  Nevertheless,  Clement  felt  that  the  Christian 
truth  commended  itself  to  his  reason;  and  the  modern  Christian 
need  not  hastily  pronounce  a  divorce  of  doctrine  from  practice. 

Another  result  from  the  tendency  just  mentioned  is  the  convic- 
tion that  the  crowning  preparation  for  a  ripe  Christian  belief  is 
experience.  Conviction  is  produced,  not  through  argument,  but 
through  the  soul's  religious  processes.  Doctrine  is  rather  the 
flower  of  religious  experience  than  its  root.  Theological  construc- 
tions are  the  product,  not  the  source,  of  religious  life.  Hence  it  is 
a  mistake  to  place  as  a  prerequisite  of  the  Christian  life  an  under- 


2  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

standing  of  Christian  doctrine.  The  divine  order  is  plain :  "If  any 
man  willeth  to  do  his  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  teaching,  whether 
it  is  of  God,  or  whether  I  speak  from  myself." 

According  to  the  scholastics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  order  of 
Christian  faith  is:  first,  notitia,  a  knowledge  of  the  biblical  teach- 
ings of  Christianity ;  second,  assensus,  an  assent  to  these  doctrines ; 
and  third,  fiducia,  a  personal  acceptance  of  the  system.  Insistence 
upon  this  order  is  the  sword  at  the  garden,  to  drive  away  thought- 
ful minds.  Men  ask :  "How  do  I  know  whether  these  doctrines 
are  true  ?"  Much  infidelity  can  be  averted  by  the  true  order :  first, 
notitia,  a  knowledge  of  the  person,  Jesus  Christ;  second,  fiducia, 
an  intrusting  of  the  life  to  him  by  a  holy  confidence;  and  third, 
gradually,  and  not  by  compulsion  nor  by  authority,  an  assensus  to 
the  doctrines  as  they  are  demonstrated  by  the  inner  life.  It  is  not 
by  scientific  argument  or  speculative  reason  that  we  are  to  be 
religious,  but  by  the  apprehension  or  knowledge  of  the  person, 
Jesus,  and  the  requisite  attitude  toward  him. 

Again,  it  is  more  or  less  acknowledged  that  a  theological  super- 
structure cannot  be  based  on  the  uncertain  foundation  of  science. 
In  one  of  the  essays  in  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  Mr. 
Royce  demonstrates  the  failure,  from  the  data  of  modern  science, 
to  describe  the  succession  of  phenomena  into  the  infinite.  As 
long  as  the  term  "finite"  is  used,  the  order  of  nature  is  exact  and 
explainable;  but  no  possible  explanation  can  be  given  of  the 
infinite  series  either  of  the  past  or  future.  Consider  all  of  the 
usual  arguments  for  the  existence  and  being  of  God,  such  as  form 
the  introduction  to  so  many  theological  textbooks — how  little 
capable  of  producing  religious  conviction!  A  God  to  be  wor- 
shiped is  not  discovered  as  the  goal  of  a  course  of  reasoning,  or  as 
the  conclusion  of  a  syllogism.  A  statement  of  an  order  of  phe- 
nomena is  not  a  disclosure  of  the  reality  behind  the  phenomena. 
It  is  not  from  man  and  the  world  to  God  that  we  can  proceed. 
Science  finds  here  an  impassable  gulf.  God  must  be  reached  by  a 
direct  method,  and  the  divine  order  established:  from  God  to  the 
world  and  man. 

Nevertheless,  scientific  and  religious  truth  are  not  contradictory. 
God  is  the  same;  the  constitution  of  the  world  and  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  mind  are  correlates.  There  is  no  schism  in  truth.  Nor 
are  the  deliverances  of  science  more  certain  than  those  of  religion, 


INTRODUCTION  3 

both  resting  upon  faith.  In  the  formulation  therefore  of  religious 
truth,  the  God  and  Savior  of  revelation  must  first  be  believed  and 
accepted  before  there  can  result  individual  doctrinal  belief  or  an 
accepted  rationale  of  the  universe. 

In  view  then  of  these  manifest  advantages  of  a  purely  ethical  con- 
notation of  Christian  truth,  and  of  the  fact  that  any  formulation 
must  be  of  a  greater  worth  to  the  Christian  than  to  the  unbeliever, 
the  raison  d'etre  of  a  treatise  on  the  method  of  the  Incarnation 
must  be  found  in  the  affirmative  answer  to  these  two  questions: 
first,  is  any  theological  formulation  of  Christian  teaching  in 
regard  to  the  person  of  Christ  permanent,  beneficial,  and  trust- 
worthy; and  second,  if  the  previous  question  is  answered  affirma- 
tively, will  it  be  advisable  to  attempt  any  fresh  formulations  ? 

Two  of  the  three  classes  that  believe  in  Christianity  today  are 
to  be  commiserated.  The  first  class  believes  that  the  truths  of 
revelation  are  to  be  proved  similarly  to  the  determination  of  the 
composition  of  water  as  H2O.  The  second  class  fails  to  find  a 
reasonable  basis  for  Christianity  and  yet  adheres  to  it  hoping 
against  hope.  Like  Jacobi,  its  members  are  Christians  with  their 
hearts  and  infidels  with  their  minds. 

Perhaps  it  is  with  full  recognition  of  the  inherent  difficulties 
of  the  subject  of  Christology  that  Christian  writers  have  thus  writ- 
ten :  "To  know  Christ  is  to  know  his  benefits,  not  to  dispute  about 
his  nature ;"  "the  Incarnation  ....  can  never  be  comprehended  by 
human  thought;"  "the  problem  (of  the  Incarnation)  is  insoluble 
with  our  present  knowledge;"  "the  divinity  of  Christ  is  incapable 
of  any  adequate  metaphysical  explanation."  But  all  these 
statements  are  but  to  declare  the  uselessness  of  the  attempts  of 
the  centuries — to  affirm  with  the  old  rabbinic  master  that  when  man 
spoke,  there  was  only  one  meaning,  but  when  God  spoke,  there 
could  be  from  five  to  forty-nine  meanings. 

The  question  is  a  practical  one.  If  our  religious  ideas  are  but 
the  vapor  that  arises  from  the  cauldron  of  our  heart,  then  it  is  a 
blunder  to  condense  into  dogma  what  might  have  been  the  pent-up 
energy  for  activity.  If,  as  Professor  George  B.  Stevens  affirms 
in  his  book  on  Doctrine  and  Life,  we  can,  by  separating  the  method 
of  the  Incarnation  from  the  considerations  which  favor  the  fact, 
and  by  frankly  admitting  that  the  former  is  an  absolute  mystery, 


4  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

cause  the  idea  of  the  Incarnation  to  commend  itself  to  us,  then  why 
waste  energy  in  producing  the  contrary  effect? 

The  western  mind,  however,  demands  a  synthesis  and  classifi- 
cation. The  simple  affirmation  to  unbelievers  of  the  fact  of  the 
Incarnation  reveals  a  vital  reason  for  attempting  a  statement  of 
the  Incarnation  which  shall  be  both  definite  and  consistent  with  the 
biblical  data.  Erroneous  conceptions  need  the  opposition  of  cor- 
rect views.  Even  if  there  is  no  intention  of  constructing  a  new 
system,  the  very  act  of  undermining  a  false  structure  supplies 
material  for  a  new  formation.  When  one  enunciates  reasons  for 
accepting  the  self -revelation  of  God  through  Christ  to  the  human 
race,  and  for  affirming  that  Christ  has  the  value  of  God  to  men, 
however  we  intertwine  moral  terms,  we  have  the  beginnings  of  a 
theology.  The  very  manipulation  of  words  demands  a  condi- 
tion of  intellectual  development  raised  above  mere  feeling  and 
sentiment. 

It  is  an  extreme  view  that  no  certain  knowledge  can  be  gained 
of  God  outside  the  historical  Christ,  for  there  is  a  revelation  of 
God  both  in  the  heavens  that  declare  his  glory,  and  in  the  heart 
of  man  that  receives  the  light  that  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh 
into  the  world.  There  are  two  sources  of  the  knowledge  of  God, 
and  they  must  and  can  be  correlated.  From  a  scientific  view  of 
the  world  arises  a  corresponding  philosophy;  and  this  philosophy 
must  agree  with  the  Christian  philosophy,  which,  to  a  Christian, 
arises  from  his  observation  of  the  revelation  in  Christ.  There 
cannot  be  dualistic  philosophies  existing  side  by  side  in  the  same 
mind;  and  the  effort  to  unify  them  will  compel  the  thinker  to 
reduce  them  to  a  common  terminology. 

The  problem  rests  here:  Grant  the  historical  event  of  Christ's 
revelation,  and  you  must  have  a  philosophy  arising  from  your 
view  of  the  facts  of  the  Christian  revelation ;  but  grant  a  Christian 
philosophy,  and  you  must  connect  it  with  the  philosophy  that  arises 
from  your  view  of  the  world.  Notice  a  late  statement  of  this. 
In  the  preface  of  President  Schurman's  Belief  in  God,  this  state- 
ment is  found:  "No  theological  belief  can  rest  on  a  mere  his- 
torical occurrence.  An  open-eyed  theology  must  have  a  philosophical 
basis/'  And  later,  in  the  body  of  the  book,  he  says:  "I 
do  not  hide,  therefore,  the  conviction  that  the  problem  of  the 
modern  theist  consists  in  the  union  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  modes 


INTRODUCTION  5 

of  interpreting  existence.  We  must  have  a  synthesis  of  the  Father  of 
all  spirits  with  the  ground  of  all  nature.  In  other  words,  we  shall 
be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  anthropocosmic  theism."  It 
must  be  acknowledged,  however,  that  philosophers  generally,  start- 
ing from  a  philosophical  Weltanschauung,  have  not  felt  obligated 
to  conform  their  idea  of  the  Absolute  to  the  view  of  God  arising 
from  the  Christian  revelation.  Hence  arises  the  apologetic  ques- 
tion :  Why  should  the  philosopher  start  from  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness more  than  from  the  Buddhistic  consciousness,  and  why 
from  either?  This  previous  question  is,  however,  not  considered 
in  the  present  discussion.  To  the  Christian,  the  two  views  cannot 
be  regarded  as  generically  antithetic,  and  his  Christian  must  include 
his  human  consciousness. 

It  is  also  apparent  that  a  Soteriology  must  rest  on  an  adequate 
Christology.  To  lose  the  objective  and  real  Christ  is  to  dissipate 
Christianity.  Faith  will  refuse  to  rest  on  that  which  the  mind 
refuses  to  examine.  A  study  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels  reveals,  to  be 
sure,  the  ethical  elements  of  the  presentation  of  Christ  as  pre- 
eminent; but  the  ethical  has  a  basis  in  the  metaphysical.  The 
center  of  the  ethical  character  and  mission  of  Jesus  is  his  person, 
and  the  significance  of  Christ's  person  must  be  measured  by  his 
relation  to  God,  man,  and  the  world. 

It  fascinates  a  modern  mind  to  think  that  the  idea  is  the  con- 
tent, and  the  husk,  in  which  the  idea  comes,  is  unessential;  the 
kernel  lives  and  is  reproductive,  the  shell  is  accidental  and  transi- 
tory. But  suppose  the  observer  watches  the  practical  effect  of  the 
attempt  to  discard  the  husk  and  save  the  kernel  ?  Note  the  opinion 
of  Professor  Green  and  Thomas  Carlyle,  that  if  Arianism  had 
won,  Christianity  would  have  dwindled  away  to  a  legend.  Note 
the  logical  drift  of  the  Unitarian  church,  that  began  with  the  denial 
of  the  deity  of  Christ,  and  now  admits  anyone  to  the  church — 
Buddhist  or  Mohammedan — providing  he  wants  to  receive  or  give 
help.  In  the  words  of  one  of  their  speakers :  "We  have  stripped 
off  every  rag.  We  have  destroyed  all  the  machinery." 

Richard  H.  Hutton,  in  his  Theological  Essays,  indicates  some  of 
the  influences  which  compelled  him  to  accept  the  Incarnation  as  the 
central  truth  of  the  Christian  revelation.  In  answer  to  the  diffi- 
culty that  the  "infinite  being  could  not  become  finite,  or  take  up 
human  nature  into  his  own,  except  as  a  mere  simulated  appear- 


6  THE   INCARNATION  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT 

ance,"  he  says  that  the  difficulty  has  entirely  disappeared  for  him. 
By  noting  the  phenomena  of  paralysis  in  which  the  richest  powers 
of  a  man  of  genius  which  seemed  to  belong  to  him,  identified 
with  his  personality,  are  stripped  from  him  and  he  is  reduced  to  a 
poor  solitary  ego,  or  perhaps  lives  in  two  worlds,  in  one  of  which 
he  is  a  feeble,  helpless,  isolated  will  and  in  the  other  a  man  of 
genius  still,  it  seems  to  Mr.  Hutton  to  be — 

simply  the  most  presumptuous  of  all  presumptuous  assumptions  to  deny  that 

the  Son  of  God  might  have  really  entered  into  a  finite  being If  there 

is  an  indestructible  moral  individuality  which  constitutes  self,  which  is  the 
same  when  wielding  the  largest  powers  and  when  it  sits  alone  at  the  dark 
center— which  may  even  live  under  a  double  set  of  conditions  at  the  same 
time — I  can  see  no  metaphysical  contradiction  in  an  Incarnation. 

Plainly  the  view  as  touched  upon  by  Mr.  Hutton  in  the  above 
quotation,  is  what  Dr.  A.  B.  Bruce 'calls  the  "double  life"  theory. 
With  Mr.  Hutton,  it  removes  the  intellectual  difficulties  for  an 
honest  acceptance  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ  of  God.  The  "double 
life"  or  any  other  theory  is  not  proved  true  because  it  removes 
barriers  to  belief,  nor  is  a  personal  and  saving  knowledge  of  Christ 
synonymous  with  an  acceptance  of  a  christological  theory.  An 
intellectual  conception  must  not  be  confounded  with  a  religious 
apprehension.  Nevertheless,  a  system  of  beliefs  which  corresponds 
to  our  intellectual  experiences  and  yet  is  made  plumb  with  biblical 
truth  is  shown  by  Mr.  Hutton's  experience  to  be  helpful.  Such  a 
system  may  and  should  be  recognized  as  being  human-made  and 
more  or  less  temporary  in  form.  History  should  never  repeat 
itself  in  making  council-made  creeds  the  condition  of  salvation. 

The  second  question  submitted  for  answer  is :  Is  a  fresh  formu- 
lation of  Christian  teaching,  and  especially  of  the  doctrine  of  Christ, 
beneficial  and  necessary? 

There  is  a  strong  present  tendency  to  regard  "Scripture  terms 
and  categories  as  alone  authorized  and  as  alone  competent  to 
express  a  true  and  adequate  doctrine  of  the  person  of  Jesus."  Yet, 
as  far  as  Christ  was  concerned,  he  never  formulated  a  system  of 
faith.  Paul's  teachings  were  produced  under  the  stress  of  opposi- 
tion, and  therefore  the  various  epistles  must  supplement  each  other. 
It  is  even  fair  to  suppose,  from  the  temporary  occasion  of  their 
composition,  that  all  together  do  not  in  every  instance  give  a  com- 
plete presentation  of  a  given  subject.  Paul  himself  says :  "Now 


INTRODUCTION  7 

we  know  in  part."  The  interpretation  of  Christ's  life  in  the  New 
Testament,  therefore,  was  true  but  not  exhaustive.  Nevertheless, 
the  teaching  of  the  New  Testament  must  be  the  mold  about  which 
all  later  statements  are  to  be  formed;  and  as  the  teachings  of  the 
New  Testament  are  ever  more  clearly  understood,  a  restatement 
of  Christian  doctrine  must  be  made  which  shall  correspond  to  the 
New  Testament  standard. 

Passing  to  the  later  centuries,  the  same  statement  must  assuredly 
be  made.  We  shall  never  possess  terms  or  ideas  sufficient  to  express 
the  myriad  relationships  of  Christ.  We  shall  never  have  enough 
experiences  in  whose  solution  all  alloys  shall  be  dissolved  from 
the  nugget  of  truth.  The  last  word  has  not  yet  been  spoken 
concerning  the  person  of  Christ. 

That  is  true  of  Christianity,  which  Max  Muller  avers  of  all 
forms  o^  religion  in  general : 

It  is  seldom  borne  in  mind  that  without  constant  return  to  its  fountain 
head,  every  religion,  even  the  most  perfect,  nay,  the  most  perfect  on  account 
of  its  very  perfection  more  even  than  others,  suffers  from  its  contact  with 
the  world,  as  the  purest  air  suffers  from  the  mere  fact  of  its  being  breathed. 

Alien  elements  which  have  adhered  to  the  systems  of  beliefs 
but  have  not  been  nor  can  ever  be  assimiliated,  must  be  detached 
that  normal  growth  may  ensue. 

Again,  Christianity  must  have  power  of  adaptation.  "Mahomet 
as  he  was  rules  Mahometans  as  they  are,"  says  Hutton.  But 
Christianity  is  growing;  it  makes  vital  connections  with  each  age. 
The  great  desideratum  of  an  adequate  Christology  is  a  modern 
mold  of  thought.  After  the  historical  student  has  made  the  year 
2,000  the  year  30,  the  Aryan  mind  the  Semitic,  and  Europe  Pales- 
tine, the  process  must  be  reversed.  The  principles  of  the  Palestin- 
ian presentation  of  Christ  must  be  translated  into  the  thought  and 
speech  of  the  present  day. 

All  of  God's  revelations  have  been  mediated  by  historical  con- 
ditions. We  cannot  have  a  historic  religion  which  does  not  inte- 
grate itself  into  our  conceptions.  Past  statements  of  Christian 
doctrine  are  not  necessarily  the  best,  even  though  we  must  unhesi- 
tatingly retain  the  data  of  the  revelation.  "Every  age,"  says 
Schaff,  "must  produce  its  own  apologetics,  adapted  to  prevailing 
tendencies  and  wants." 

This    acknowledgment   of   mutability   in   theology   must   apply 


8  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

also  to  doctrine  as  accepted  today.     Our  interpretations  can  never 
be  fixed  or  absolutely  authoritative  as  a  test  of  doctrine,  except  in 
so  far  as  they  render  impossible  misstatements  of  the  facts  them- 
selves.    The  facts  are  permanent;  the  interpretations  temporal. 
Our  little  systems  have  their  day; 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be; 
They  are  but  broken  lights  of  thee, 
And  thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they. 

The  Spirit  of  God  still  moves  on  the  face  of  history.  The  main 
currents  of  life  and  thought  have  been  regulated  by  Providence. 
Though  there  have  been  currents  and  eddies,  Christian  thought  has 
flowed  on  toward  the  ocean  of  infinite  truth. 

To  change  the  formulation  does  not  change  the  truth,  even 
though  it  be  granted  that  the  older  formulation  did  not  express 
the  whole  truth.  The  older  form  was  a  true  manifestation, 
but  did  not  exhaust  the  content.  Even  the  word  "Logos"  may 
have  been  simply  the  form  or  coin  of  an  early  age,  while  the 
bullion  may  be  remelted  for  the  philosophical  molds  of  other  times. 
The  idea  is  permanent;  the  mold  transient,  and  not  fully  adequate, 
as  no  philosophical  term  ever  is,  to  the  idea.  Yet  even  today  the 
ancient  philosophical  form  expresses  a  truth  the  validity  of  which 
the  modern  form  does  not  annul.  The  term  need  never  be  entirely 
superseded,  and  never  should  be  if  it  belongs  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment, even  though  later  terminology  may  have  intervened. 

The  Christ  as  known  tomorrow  will  assume  larger  meaning  to 
the  world.  A  conception  of  Christ  which  did  not  touch  the  prac- 
tical thought  and  life  of  a  generation  would  be  a  burden  to  faith. 
Christ  must  be  complete  to  every  age,  the  best  expression  of  its 
life,  the  full  realization  of  its  ideals,  the  adequate  interpretation  of 
its  thought. 

The  possibility  and  advisability,  both  of  accepting  any  theo- 
logical system  whatsoever  and  of  making  a  fresh  contribution  to 
theological  thought,  have  now  been  affirmed.  Not  that  any  one 
author  can  lead  the  development  of  doctrine  along  correct  lines,  or 
bound  the  ocean  of  thought  by  a  coral  reef.  To  form  a  closed 
system,  to  bottle  up  truth  in  labeled  vessels  of  definition,  is  but  to 
repeat  a  false  history.  This  present  treatise  not  only  does  not 
purpose  to  furnish  a  permanent  system  oi  Christology  but  not 
even  a  system,  attempting  rather  to  indicate  the  perspective  lines 


INTRODUCTION  9 

upon  the  canvas  according  to  which,  it  seems  to  the  author,  the 
future  theologian  will  fix  the  unity  of  his  picture  and  lay  in  the 
living  colors ;  or,  to  change  the  figure,  to  indicate  the  tendencies 
in  accordance  with  which  truth  is  being  enveloped  in  its  human 
garment. 

But  how  shall  this  be  done  ?  Harnack  may  give  the  answer : 
For  the  historian,  however,  who  does  not  wish  to  serve  a  party,  there 
are  two  standards  in  accordance  with  which  he  may  criticize  the  history  of 
dogma.  He  may  either,  as  far  as  possible,  compare  it  with  the  Gospel,  or 
he  may  judge  it  according  to  the  historical  conditions  of  the  time  and  the 
result. 

So  much  for  the  examination  of  a  dogma  of  the  past.  For  the 
presentation  of  any  possible  formulation  of  truth  the  same  two 
criteria  may  be  used — a  fidelity  to  the  gospel  standard,  on  the  one 
side,  and  a  compliance  with  the  present  historical  conditions,  on  the 
other.  The  former  requirement  should  be  met  by  an  inductive 
study  of  the  New  Testament  to  determine  the  exact  content  of  the 
gospel  standard;  the  latter  requirement  should  be  met  as  any 
tenet  is  re-examined  and  restated  in  view  of  the  later  developments 
of  science  and  philosophy. 

According  to  the  plan  above  outlined,  the  treatment  of  the 
Incarnation  and  Modern  Thought  should  be  divided  into  two  parts : 
first,  an  examination  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament,  to  formu- 
late certain  christological  canons,  which  shall  be  the  standards  for 
any  future  as  well  as  past  Christology;  and  second,  to  indicate, 
both  in  accordance  with  these  canons  and  the  behests  of  modern 
thought,  the  larger  lines  of  the  features  of  any  future  Christology. 
The  studies  included  in  the  first  part,  not  traversing  new  subjects 
of  investigation,  will  not  be  presented  here.  It  will  be  sufficient  to 
specify  results  in  what  may  be  called  "The  christological  Canons 
of  the  New  Testament." 

1.  God  and  man  are  akin. 

2.  There  is  in  all  states  of  Jesus  Christ  an  identity  of  subject. 

3.  In  both  the  pre-existent  and  exalted  states,  he  is  the  principle 
by  which  the  universe  is  a  cosmos  and  all  physical  and  spiritual  life 
exist. 

4.  In  his  pre-existent  state  he  was  possessed  of  divine  condi- 
tions and  powers,  and  yet  essentially  human  in  nature,  without 
beginning,  dwelling  eternally  in  divine  and  equal  association  with 


10  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

the  Father,  the  self -manifesting  element  of  God,  God's  sole  and 
sufficient  revelation,  and  the  source  of  all  moral  and  spiritual 
enlightenment. 

5.  In  his  earthly  state  he  was  sinless,  the  ideal  man,  rendering 
perfect  obedience  to  God,  ethically  one  with  the  Father,  an  adequate 
ethical    representation    and   manifestation    of    God.      He    lived   a 
normal  human  life,  not  as  an  assumption  but  a  natural  transforma- 
tion of  the  divine  life,  emptied  of  all  heavenly  powers  and  privi- 
leges.    He  grew   in   knowledge   and   moral   perfection,   enduring 
temptation,    depending   upon    God   in   every   religious   and   moral 
activity,  with  a  life  mediated  by  the  Holy  Spirit. 

6.  In  his  exalted  state,  he  has  both  a  local  and  universal  exist- 
ence. 

These  canons  are  not  intended  to  be  an  exhaustive  statement 
of  New  Testament  christological  axioms,  but  a  presentation  of 
those  principles  which  show  an  affinity  for  certain  products  of 
modern  thought.  They  have  a  twofold  value,  both  to  test  any 
system  of  theological  thought  bequeathed  by  the  past,  and  to  be 
the  architectural  design  for  any  future  construction.  In  accordance 
with  this  latter  use,  they  can  now  be  connected  with  such  philo- 
sophical and  scientific  conceptions  as  divine  immanence,  the  exaltation 
of  man  at  the  head  of  creation,  social  and  racial  solidarity,  evo- 
lutionary development,  unity  of  consciousness,  and  with  the  more 
Christian  conceptions  of  the  ethical  nature  of  God  and  the  uni- 
versal and  vitalizing  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    LOGOS    IN    THE    WORLD— DIVINE    IMMANENCE 

The  doctrine  of  the  immanence  of  God  is  the  presupposition  of 
all  science.  On  the  one  side,  the  various  forms  of  physical  inter- 
action can  be  accounted  for  only  by  a  substantial  unity  of  all 
material  things,  and  an  orderly  universe  is  possible  only  as  there  is 
an  indwelling  presence  of  God.  On  the  other  side,  without  the 
immanent  God,  there  would  be  no  correspondence  between  mind 
and  matter,  or  at  least  no  knowledge  of  matter  by  mind  that  could 
be  considered  trustworthy.  The  reasonable  basis  of  science  is  the 
doctrine  of  the  immanence  of  God. 

The  doctrine  of  the  divine  immanence  of  God  as  opposed  to  a 
one-sided  emphasis  of  the  doctrine  of  the  transcendence  of  God  has 
not  only  long  been  popularized  by  such  literary  endeavors  as  that 
of  Emerson,  but  has  of  late  been  expressed  in  many  philosophical 
forms.  One  of  these  philosophical  forms  is  a  monism  that  teaches 
that  there  is  one  underlying  principle  of  all  reality.  There  are 
two  extremes  of  monism,  pantheism  in  which  matter  is  all  in  all, 
and  idealism  in  which  God  is  all  in  all.  The  mean  of  monism  is 
the  doctrine  of  the  immanence  of  God,  God  in  his  universe,  the 
infinite  ever  expressing  itself  in  the  finite. 

In  support  of  the  view  that  forms  of  a  monistic  philosophy  are 
gaining  a  wider  support,  Professor  Ladd  may  be  quoted:  "Dual- 
ism, as  a  claimant  for  the  position  of  a  rational  and  consistent  sys- 
tem of  thinking,  is  undoubtedly  being  discredited  by  the  progress 
of  the  age."  And  yet  elsewhere,  after  stating  that  the  new  form 
of  physiological  psychology  has  a  strong  monistic  tendency  favor- 
ing a  monistic  philosophy,  he  says  that  this  psychology  does  not 
deny  "the  derived  and  independent  reality  of  either  the  body  or 
the  mind."  For  either  scientific  or  purely  theological  purposes,  it 
is  sufficient  to  abide  by  the  use  of  the  term,  "the  Immanence  of 
God,"  which  on  the  one  hand  does  not  deny  "the  derived  and  inde- 
pendent reality  of  either  the  body  or  the  mind,"  and  yet  affirms  a 
unity  of  the  universe  as  dependent  upon  the  indwelling  presence 
of  God. 

One  form  of  this  monistic  philosophy  attains  to  still  higher 


12          THE  INCARNATION  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT 

affirmations.  It  not  only  proclaims  a  universal  underlying  substance 
as  the  principle  of  all  existences  and  the  source  of  all  interactions, 
but  it  declares  that  this  basal  unity  is  possessed  of  self -conscious- 
ness, intelligence,  and  will.  So  Ladd  says:  "This  monism  must 
find  the  unity  of  all  being  and  knowledge,  the  World-ground,  in 
an  ideal  Reality,  a  realized  Ideal.  Such  a  one  is  nothing  less  than 
some  rational,  self-conscious,  and  personal  life."  Lotze,  as  a 
representative  of  a  pure  monism,  identifies  his  conception  of  the 
one  substance  with  his  conception  of  the  living  God,  and  defines 
the  all-one  substance  as  the  absolutely  good  and  the  all-personality. 

This  extreme  form  of  a  monistic  philosophy  corresponds  to 
Christ's  teaching.  The  Jews  had  recognized  the  activity  of  God 
even  in  the  minute  affairs  of  the  universe,  but  considered  God  as 
separate  from  the  universe  mechanically  ordering  the  world.  The 
teaching  of  the  omnipresence  of  God,  but  not  a  true  immanence,  is  to 
be  found  in  the  sermons  of  the  prophets.  Still  later,  superstitious 
belief  created  a  series  of  intermediate  beings  to  administer  the 
government  of  the  world  and  God  was  relegated  to  a  more  dis- 
tant realm.  But  it  was  Jesus,  with  his  fresher  ideas  of  divine 
providence,  who  taught  that  even  a  sparrow  could  not  fall  to  the 
ground  without  the  heavenly  Father,  and  Paul  affirms  that  in 
God  "we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being." 

The  church  of  today  has  received  the  heritage  of  two  diverse 
views  of  the  early  church,  the  Greek  and  the  Latin.  The  Greek 
was  the  first  to  be  dominant,  and  the  early  church  "Fathers,  such  as 
Clement,  Origen,  Athanasius,  under  the  influence  of  the  Greek 
philosophy,  saw  in  God  "the  ever-present  life  of  the  world."  The 
Latin  idea,  differing  essentially  from  the  Greek,  emphasized  the 
transcendence  of  God,  sovereignty  enforced  from  the  central 
throne  of  the  universe.  The  Latin  view  survived  under  the  domi- 
nating influence  of  a  monarchical  form  of  government,  and  was 
crystallized  in  the  church  organization.  Not  until  the  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries  in  the  thinking  of  the  heretics  of  the  time  was  the 
Greek  idea  at  all  restored.  The  doctrine  of  the  Immanence  of  God 
found  no  place  in  the  theology  of  Calvin,  and  even  today  the 
heritage  of  the  past  renders  it  difficult  to  secure  the  oriental  turn 
of  thought  necessary  to  conceive  of  the  Immanence  of  God.  But 
a  return  is  being  made  to  the  Greek  conception,  and  when  all  doc- 


THE   LOGOS   IN  THE   WORLD  13 

trines  shall  be  restated  with  reference  to  this  vitalizing  world- 
view,  the  work  shall  have  been  completed. 

The  question  whether  religion  is  extraneous  or  native  to  man's 
nature  has  been  largely  discussed  during  the  last  fifty  years.  In 
Kidd's  Social  Evolution,  religion  is  represented  as  that  non-natural 
although  necessary  force  which  makes  life  bearable  by  overcoming 
the  struggle  for  existence.  But  the  Ascent  of  Man  finds  in  religion 
a  natural  expression  of  that  Love-for-another  which  is  a  part  of 
the  universal  constitution  of  the  world.  Evolution  was  pushing 
religion  out  of  the  domain  of  the  world,  but  religion  outflanked 
the  enemy,  and  entered  the  very  camp  of  science.  It  claimed  an 
original  occupation  of  the  field. 

The  Immanence  of  God  puts  a  new  interpretation  into  the  cos- 
mological  argument.  President  Schurman  objects  to  the  view  that 
atoms  are  "manufactured  articles."  "What  is  needed/'  he  says, 
"is  not  a  supernatural  creation  of  a  non-existent  world  but  a 
natural  interpretation  of  the  world  we  find  actually  given."  God  is 
not  simply  the  final  cause  in  the  succession  of  causes,  but  is  the 
present  producer  of  the  energy  by  which  matter  is  sustained  and 
mind  is  existent.  Deny  the  creation  of  the  world,  and  God  will 
still  be  found,  and  in  a  surer  way,  as  the  fundamental  reality,  with- 
out which  all  other  realities  are  non-existent. 

All  causation  is  to  be  considered  as  the  expression  of  God's 
will.  Secondary  causes  exist  but  not  irrespective  of  that  will. 
All  natural  causation  appears  mechanical  because  regular.  The 
irregular  has  been  termed  miracle.  But  the  world  is  not  a  machine, 
or  a  Paley's  watch,  nor  is  God  arbitrary,  not  acting  always  in  the 
same  way  under  the  same  circumstances.  The  world  is  both 
rational  and  moral.  There  is  an  orderly  succession  of  phenomena, 
not  on  account  of  the  commandments  of  God,  but  because  it  is  in 
God's  nature  that  as  one  phenomenon  occurs,  there  shall  be  a  cer- 
tain compensation,  appearing  in  another  phenomenon. 

Thus  the  former  distinction  between  the  natural  and  super- 
natural is  broken  down.  It  is  customary  to  trace  the  secondary 
causes  back  to  the  supreme  and  final  cause,  with  breaks  in  the 
succession  interposed  by  the  supreme  cause.  So  the  penumbra  of 
the  unknown  has  been  regarded  as  God's  domain,  and  consequently, 
as  the  circle  of  the  unknown  has  been  growing  smaller  with  zero 
as  its  limit,  theism  seemed  on  the  point  of  becoming  practical 


14  THE   INCARNATION  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT 

atheism.  God  is  to  be  seen,  then,  not  in  the  uncommon  alone  but  in 
the  common;  indeed  more  wonderfully  in  the  common  than  in  the 
uncommon.  The  world  is  not  a  statue  chiseled  by  God,  and  par- 
tially representing  him;  but  animate  with  his  life.  God  is  not  to  be 
found  by  going  out  of  the  world,  as  thought  Hypatia  and  the 
neo-Platonists,  but  by  a  loving  and  reverent  response  to  the  ever- 
present  Father.  The  supernatural  as  far  as  it  differs  from  the 
natural  is  but  a  varying  method  of  God's  action  in  the  universe 
consonant  with  God's  nature  and  purposes.  In  idealistic  monism 
the  subject  of  greatest  difficulty  is  the  freedom  of  the  will,  which 
seems  to  form  a  new  center  of  activity  separate  from  the  universal 
life.  This  is  true  according  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Immanence  of 
God,  in  so  far  as  God  has  thus  limited  the  free  expression  of  his 
will  in  human  personalities ;  but  not  true  in  so  far  as  nothing  can  or 
does  exist  without  the  sustaining  power  of  the  Almighty.  Le 
Conte  represents  the  vital  principle  of  plants  and  animals  and  man 
as  being  the  various  grades  of  the  "gradually  increasing  individu- 
ation  of  the  divine  energy."  Thus  the  ganglion  of  the  human 
will  is  a  redistributing  center  for  the  divine  will,  not  altogether 
independent  nor  yet  subject  to  an  absorption  of  the  personality.  A 
relative  independence  is  to  be  conceded  man's  will,  according  to  a 
right  view  of  the  Immanence  of  God. 

Then  is  God  responsible  for  the  sin  in  the  world?  How  natural 
it  is  to  say :  "God  is  not  omnipresent,  if  he  is  not  also  in  the  man 
who  sins ;  he  is  not  almighty,  if  he  admits  evil  into  the  world."  It 
is  true  that  no  system  of  theology  can  entirely  escape  this  difficulty. 
But  the  end  is  not  yet  reached,  and  the  final  judgment  of  the  world's 
history  cannot  be  made  until  the  race's  course  is  run.  Undoubtedly 
it  must  be  said  by  the  Christian  theist,  that  the  possibility  of  sin, 
though  not  the  fact  of  sin,  was  a  necessity  for  the  flowering  out  of 
the  best  life  of  the  universe.  The  brightest  type  of  Christian 
optimism  sees  something  in  Paul's  bright  vision:  "every  knee 
shall  bow,"  and  knows  the  sun  will  scatter  the  chiaroscuro  of  chang- 
ing evil  and  good  in  the  world's  history. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Immanence  of  God  teaches  that  God  is  the 
life  of  the  universe,  not  identical  with  it,  nor  exhausted  by  it.  God 
cannot  be  conceived  as  quantitatively  filling  all  space.  He  has  pos- 
sibilities of  actualizing  his  will  beyond  the  wildest  human  dreams. 
God  is  to  be  conceived  as  both  immanent  and  transcendent,  and 


THE   LOGOS   IN   THE   WORLD  15 

therefore  perfectly  free  in  all  his  operations  in  the  universe.  The 
"arrival  of  the  fittest"  which  is  the  previous  problem  to  the  "survival 
of  the  fittest"  in  evolution  finds  its  explanation  here.  The  added 
increment  in  the  progress  of  evolution  is  due  to  the  eternal  vitaliz- 
ing energy  of  God. 

The  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the  seas,  the  hills  and  the  plains, — 
Are  not  these,  O  Soul,  the  Vision  of  Him  who  reigns? 

Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  He  hears,  and  Spirit  with  Spirit  can  meet — 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than  hands  and  feet. 

The  transition  in  thought  must  now  be  made  from  the  scientific 
or  philosophical  view  of  this  doctrine  of  divine  Immanence  to  the 
theological.  Of  science  as  such,  Christianity  has  nothing  to  say. 
However,  it  receives  the  philosophical  world-principle  and  connects 
it  with  its  own  doctrines.  That  which  is  at  the  basis  of  our  confi- 
dence in  the  uniformity  of  phenomena,  that  which  is  conceived  as 
the  cause  of  the  higher  teleology  as  by  Romanes  and  Eraser,  is  not 
only  a  person,  as  has  already  been  seen,  but  the  Logos.  One  school 
of  thought  may  insist  upon  the  separation  of  our  knowledge  of 
nature  and  our  belief  in  Christ,  but  the  teachings  of  John  and  Paul 
are  congenial  to  modern  thought,  presenting  an  ontological  basis 
for  salvation.  The  doctrine  of  the  Immanence  of  the  Logos  is  not 
extraneous  to  Christian  belief.  All  of  the  offices  of  the  incarnate 
Son  in  the  work  of  redemption  and  regeneration  have  their  basis  in 
the  cosmical  relations  of  Christ.  There  must  be  a  present  Christ, 
but  not  by  the  creation  of  the  body  and  blood  in  the  Eucharist. 
Jesus  is  here  in  vital  connection  with  believing  hearts,  not  by  an 
unnatural  process,  but  because  all  human  beings  have  their  ground 
in  the  life  of  the  Logos.  Rightly  then  did  Justin  Martyr  hold  that 
there  was  a  true  revelation  in  philosophy  because  of  the  Word 
"that  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world." 

The  Incarnation  is  the  most  natural  of  occurrences.  The  defect 
in  early  Christology  was  in  treating  the  Incarnation  as  an  absolute 
miracle.  But  there  must  be  less  of  what  Dr.  Simon  calls  the  "air 
of  exceptionality."  Deny  the  Immanence  of  God,  and  the  Incarna- 
tion becomes  arbitrary  and  mechanical.  Witness  Arius  who  con- 
ceived God  as  at  an  infinite  distance  from  the  world  in  solitary 
existence,  only  communicating  to  this  world  through  the  super- 
natural man,  neither  divine  nor  human,  called  Christ.  To  think  of 


1 6  THE  INCARNATION  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT 

the  person  of  Christ  as  the  great  disturbance  of  nature  belittles  the 
grandeur  of  the  cosmic  scheme,  and  connects  Christ  only  arbi- 
trarily with  the  salvation  of  the  world.  But  regarding  God  as 
immanent,  it  would  be  unscientific  to  affirm  the  impossibility  of  the 
Incarnation.  When  the  Logos  is  the  cohesive  principle  of  the  uni- 
verse, the  Incarnation  cannot  be  a  break  in  the  established  system. 
Referring  again  to  the  quotation  above  made  from  Le  Conte, 
that  the  plant,  the  animal,  and  man  are  but  the  individuation  in 
various  conditions  of  the  all-pervading  force,  the  divine  energy, 
this  sentence  is  found:  "Again  a  spark  of  the  pervading  energy 
struggles  still  upward,  and  under  still  higher  conditions,  com- 
pletes its  individuality  and  becomes  a  living  soul,  or  immortal  spirit 
of  man."  Using  the  same  terminology  and  waiving  at  present  the 
consideration  of  the  difference  of  nature  between  Christ  and 
human  beings,  could  not  Christ  thus  be  described,  and  would  not 
his  advent  seem  as  natural?  If  God  is  immanent,  the  connection 
between  the  divine  and  human  in  Christ  has  not  been  arbitrarily 
made;  instead  of  the  old  enforced  alliance  between  the  human  and 
divine,  there  is  a  vital  union.  To  deny  the  immanence  of  God  is 
to  emphasize  the  divine  nature  of  Christ  at  the  expense  of  the 
human,  while  in  fact  the  Incarnation  is  a  revelation  in  flesh,  not  a 
concealing  of  the  God  who  is  all  in  all. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   LOGOS    IN    HUMANITY— DIVINE   AND    HUMAN    KINSHIP 

It  was  Dorner  who  once  wrote :  "To  true  christological  knowl- 
edge it  is  necessary  above  all  to  sound  the  depths  of  the  idea  of 
deity  and  of  the  idea  of  humanity  in  their  relation  to  each  other; 
the  possibility  and  significance  of  their  union  in  one  person  will  then 
become  clear  of  themselves."  And  not  only  does  the  reality  of  the 
divine-human  personality  depend  upon  the  relationship  between  the 
human  and  the  divine,  but  the  adequacy  and  character  of  redemp- 
tion. What  man  is  in  Christ  as  well  as  what  Christ  is  as  God  in 
the  world,  depends  upon  the  relation  which  obtains  between  the 
divine  and  human.  By  some  the  creation  and  sustentation  of 
matter  is  regarded  as  a  self -limitation  of  God,  because  matter  is 
regarded  as  finite  and  not  a  pliable  agent  of  God's  will.  If  so,  it 
is  a  limitation  self-imposed  by  God,  not  subversive  of  God's  omnipo- 
tence. If  the  sustentation  of  matter  is  self -limitation,  then  the 
self -limitation  must  be  greater  in  the  higher  grades  of  life-organi- 
zations until  where  there  is  the  self-centered  will  of  man,  the  self- 
limitation  is  at  its  greatest.  And  yet  must  not  this  self-sacrifice  be 
for  a  great  moral  purpose  worthy  of  the  nature  of  God?  And 
whatever  that  moral  purpose  is — and  the  gospel  reveals  it — that  is 
the  motive  for  the  Incarnation,  which  according  to  this  view  must 
be  God's  supreme  act  of  self -limitation.  And  as  the  purpose  is  one, 
so  is  the  character  of  the  self -limitation  the  same — God  immanent 
in  his  universe  limiting  himself  in  matter,  in  organic  forms,  in 
human  personalities,  and  in  the  Son  of  God,  the  climactic  expres- 
sion of  God's  love,  and  the  most  natural  yet  supernatural  individua- 
tion  of  his  life. 

The  ever-present  problem  of  the  early  church  was  the  unifica- 
tion of  the  divine  and  human  in  Christ  with  the  ever-present  danger 
of  losing  the  uniqueness  of  the  sonship  of  Christ  while  securing 
an  adequate  redemption  for  man  by  virtue  of  this  union.  The 
danger  assumed  so  large  proportions  at  the  time  of  the  Eutychian 
controversy  that  the  doctrine  that  the  divine  nature  is  consubstantial 
with  ours  has  ever  since  been  declared  heretical.  Seventeen  cen- 
turies of  unsuccessful  endeavor  to  make  lifelike  the  divine-human 

17 


1 8  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

nature  of  Christ  ended  in  a  deistic  rationalism  which  made  the 
divine  and  human  contradictory  terms  and  consigned  God  to  the 
edge  of  the  universe,  leaving  men  to  hear,  as  Jean  Paul  Richter 
says,  "the  screech  of  a  Fatherless  world." 

The  reactionary  philosophy,  teaching  the  absolute  unity  of  the 
human  existence  with  the  divine,  which  Fichte,  as  an  exponent  of 
this  speculative  tendency,  called  "the  profoundest  insight  man  can 
attain,"  failed  again  in  not  recognizing  Christ  as  the  Son  of  God. 
It  gave,  however,  a  greater  prominence  to  the  eternal  significance 
of  human  sonship,  and  aided  philosophy  in  its  renewed  attempts  at 
explaining  Christ.  Today  that  which  Dorner  said  is  still  true : 
"The  characteristic  feature  of  all  recent  Christologies  is  the  en- 
deavor to  point  out  the  essential  unity  of  the  divine  and  human." 

Science  also  as  well  as  philosophy  magnifies  the  kinship  of 
God  and  man.  It  affirms  that  the  world  was  built  for  man.  The 
long  processes  of  evolution  culminating  in  the  production  of  man 
reveals  the  nature  of  God  by  the  highest  product  of  the  process, 
that  is,  man.  Man  alone  knows  the  language  of  God,  bows  to  the 
obligation  of  the  Ought,  and  responds  to  the  Father's  love.  So 
Agassiz  says :  "Man  is  the  end  toward  which  all  the  animal  crea- 
tion has  tended."  Bruce  says :  "In  man  all  that  went  before  finds 
its  rationale."  And  the  significance  of  this  process  culminating  in 
man,  Professor  Fiske  shows  by  the  words :  "When  from  the  dawn 
of  life  we  see  all  things  working  together  toward  the  evolution  of 
the  highest  spiritual  attributes  of  Man,  we  know,  however  the 
words  may  stumble  in  which  we  try  to  say  it,  that  God  is  in  the 
deepest  sense  a  moral  Being." 

In  other  words,  God  and  man  are  not  two  extremes  excluding 
each  other.  There  is  a  community  of  nature,  a  relationship  in  the 
same  genus.  Adam  is  the  son  of  God  and  Jesus  is  the  son  of 
Adam;  the  line  of  descent  is  continuous.  The  original  constitution 
of  man  was  stamped  with  the  image  of  God,  which  image  was  not 
lost  by  the  fall.  Man  is  like  God,  and  therefore  God  is  like  man. 
Anthropomorphism  is  in  all  of  our  ideas  of  God,  as  indeed  all 
facts  of  science  are  known  and  interpreted  in  terms  derived  from 
the  constitution  and  action  of  the  human  mind.  The  anthropomor- 
phization  of  God  and  the  apotheosis  of  man  are  both  attributable  to 
the  essential  likeness  of  the  two.  If  the  statement  in  Genesis  that 
man  is  made  in  the  image  of  God  is  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the 


:< 


THE   LOGOS   IN  HUMANITY  19 

New  Testament  passages,  that  the  world  was  made  by  Christ,  it 
follows  that  man  was  created  after  the  image  of  Christ.  Certainly 
in  Christ  do  all  things  exist,  and  from  him  do  all  human  beings 
derive  and  perpetuate  their  personality.  "Inasmuch  as  ye  have 
done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these  my  brethren,  ye  have  done 
it  unto  me."  Or  as  Whittier  wrote  of  a  negro  in  a  slave  mart, 

In  that  sad  victim  then, 
Savior  of  pitying  men, 
I  see  Thee  stand. 

The  Scripture  teaches  also  that  men  are  the  offspring  of  God. 
Three  hundred  years  before  Christ,  Arathus,  a  native  of  Cilicia, 
Paul's  own  province,  wrote: 

From  Zeus  begin:  and  never  let  us  leave 
His  name  unloved.    With  him,  with  Zeus  are  filled 
All  paths  we  tread  and  all  the  marts  of  men; 
Filled,  too,  the  sea  and  every  creek  and  bay; 
And  all,  in  all  things,  need  we  help  of  Zeus, 
For  we,  too,  are  his  offspring. 

And  Paul  quotes  approvingly. 

The  fatherhood  of  God  meant  to  the  ancient  Jew  the  patriarchal 
authority  possessed  by  the  head  of  a  large  household;  to  the 
Roman,  unbounded  authority  of  legal  control,  limited  only  by  the 
death  penalty;  to  the  modern  American — if  we  trust  Spencer — 
slavery  to  the  small  tyrants  of  the  household.  Through  every  one 
of  these  definitions,  all  insufficient,  has  God  been  viewed  and  de- 
scribed. Creatorship  is  not  fatherhood  or  else  sonship  would  not 
be  limited  to  the  human  family,  neither  does  the  goodness  and 
graciousness  of  God  alone  constitute  him  a  father  though  God  sus- 
tains moral  relations  to  man;  but  fatherhood  means,  in  its  natural 
sense,  that  man  was  created  in  the  image  of  God.  Man  is  a  per- 
sonality, self-conscious,  intelligent,  with  self-determination  and 
moral  susceptibilities.  As  such  he  belongs  to  God's  family. 

Sin  does  not  destroy  this  original  relationship.  Sin  is  not 
essential  to  the  eternal  plan  of  God,  nor  to  our  conception  of  man's 
personality.  The  branch  is  still  a  part  of  the  vine,  though  the 
ligature  has  obstructed  the  flow  of  life.  Man  saved  or  unsaved  is 
the  offspring  of  God. 

But  there  is  another,  a  deeper  sense  of  sonship  to  God  taught 


2O  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

in  the  New  Testament,  or  else  every  man,  by  virtue  of  the  indwell- 
ing of  the  Logos  within  him,  irrespective  of  the  Incarnation,  would 
be  a  son  of  God.  This  sonship,  or  adoption  as  son,  is  brought  about 
by  believing  upon  Christ.  In  conjunction  with  this  adoption  as 
son,  God  sends  the  Holy  Spirit  to  bring  into  the  consciousness  this 
sonship  as  vital  and  real.  Accordingly  evil  men  are  called  children 
of  the  devil,  whether  the  term  is  used  by  Christ  or  Paul ;  and  those 
who  are  Godlike,  loving  their  enemies,  are  children  of  the  Father. 
The  latter,  however,  can  only  become  children  of  the  Father  as 
they  are  born  of  the  Spirit.  It  is  plainly  taught  that  only  those 
who  have  been  born  again  are  capable  of  being  Godlike  in  nature 
and  action. 

Some  have  thought  to  make  these  two  conceptions  of  sonship 
irreconcilable,  at  least  as  far  as  the  Bible  is  concerned.  "We  can- 
not/' says  Fairbairn,  "accept  Luther's  article  of  a  standing  or  fall- 
ing church  as  our  principium  essendi.  It  is  Paul's  rather  than 
Christ's ;  it  may  be  true,  but  it  still  remains  what  it  was  at  first — a 
deduction  by  a  disciple,  not  a  principle  enunciated  by  the  Master." 
Nor  did  the  dualism— if  such  there  be — cease  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment. The  one  idea,  the  universal  fatherhood,  had  a  history  in 
Greek  theology  which  emphasized  the  essential  unity  of  God  and 
man.  The  other  idea,  the  limited  sonship,  dwelt  exclusively  in  the 
Latin  theology,  which  emphasized  the  separation  of  God  and  man 
except  under  certain  prescribed  conditions.  There  is  a  unity  between 
God  and  man,  in  essential  nature ;  there  is  a  separation,  in  ethical 
unlikeness.  Christ  was  son  of  God  by  virtue  of  his  ethical  one- 
ness with  God ;  man,  as  ethically  one  with  God,  is  also  son  of  God, 
only  he  cannot  attain  unto  this  ethical  oneness  until  the  life  of 
Christ  breaks  the  ligature  of  sin  and  brings  him  again  into  vital 
connection  with  the  eternal  source  of  life.  One  is  the  natural  son- 
ship;  the  other,  the  spiritual.  One  is  physical,  the  other  ethical. 
But  the  spiritual  sonship  is  never  possible  without  the  basis  of  the 
natural.  God  is  ever  the  Father  both  naturally  and  ethically ;  but 
man  is  not  so  ethically  until  the  Holy  Spirit  becomes  the  channel 
of  a  new  life  from  Jesus  Christ. 

Through  the  kinship  of  the  divine  and  human,  humanity  has 
the  capacity  for  the  divine,  and  is  not,  as  in  a  Latin  atmosphere  is 
taught,  unsuitable  for  spirit  abode,  or  an  inadequate  expression  of 
the  Logos.  The  seed  of  life  cannot  be  implanted  where  there  is 


THE   LOGOS   IN  HUMANITY  21 

not  a  proper  environment.  Humanity  was  the  proper  foundation 
for  the  superstructure  of  the  divine.  The  Logos  could  never  have 
been  incarnated  in  a  lower  form  of  animal  life.  Thus  Luther's 
dictum  must  be  true:  Finitum  capax  infiniti.  "It  takes  a  God 
to  discern  a  God,"  says  Novalis;  so  it  takes  the  divine  to  receive 
the  divine.  Christ  was  "manifested  at  the  end  of  the  times,"  not 
concealed.  It  is  through  the  medium  of  the  humanity  that  the  Logos 
is  revealed,  not  apart  from  it.  With  the  Immanence  of  God,  and 
then  above  that,  the  divine  and  human  kinship,  we  shall  turn  from 
every  form  of  Docetism  or  Ebionitism  to  the  true  Incarnation  of 
the  Word.  We  cannot  prove  the  divinity  of  Christ  unless  man 
himself  be  regarded  as  divine.  Once  we  made  man  as  little  as 
possible  to  prove  Christ's  divinity;  now  we  make  him  as  great  as 
possible.  That  which  is  human  is  not  ideally  human  unless  divine, 
and  the  final  argument  for  the  divinity  of  Christ  is  his  perfect 
humanity. 


^    ^   Of  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


of 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    LOGOS    IN    HUMANITY— RACE    SOLIDARITY 

A  race  unity  is  generally  acknowledged  to  be  one  of  the  pre- 
suppositions of  religion,  though  the  character  of  that  unity  has 
more  or  less  escaped  definition.  Two  New  Testament  passages 
show  that  one  bond  of  racial  unity  is  the  common  relation  of  the 
members  of  the  race  to  Adam,  though  this  relation  is  limited  to 
man's  sinful  condition  as  derived  from  the  race's  first  ancestor.1 
Certainly  human  beings  are  all  descendants  of  Adam,  and  perhaps 
in  this  sense  are  all  "of  one."  2  As  truly,  also,  there  is  a  stream  of 
hereditary  influence  predisposing  the  heart  to  evil,  flowing  from 
the  origin  of  the  race  to  the  present  time.  There  is  also  an  inter- 
pretation whereby  Adam  was  appointed  the  representative  head  of 
the  race,  the  individuals  of  the  race  being  all  bound  by  his  actions. 
But  whether  these  or  other  like  theories  are  true,  they  do  not 
assist  in  the  furtherance  of  the  present  problem,  except  as  the 
general  statement  can  be  made  that  the  race  has  somewhat  of  a 
corporate  existence. 

A  social  solidarity  is  much  in  speech  at  present.  So  much  is 
each  individual  a  part  of  the  social  order,  that  the  slightest 
action  of  one  affects  the  welfare  of  the  whole,  as  does  the  throwing 
of  the  pebble  have  its  influence,  though  small,  upon  the  universe. 
The  solidarity  is,  however,  a  poetical  conception  based  upon  the 
countless  interactionary  influences  prevalent  in  society.  Gladstone 
has  declared  that  the  "personality  of  societies  is  not  any  mere  meta- 
physical or  theological  abstraction,  nor  a  phrase  invented  for  the 
purpose  of  discussion,  but  a  reality,  having  its  own  palpable  expo- 
nents in  the  persons  of  those  who  are  the  organs  of  society."  But 
real  though  the  social  solidarity  is,  the  race  has  not  thereby  a 
corporate  existence. 

Between  Christ  and  the  regenerate  portion  of  humanity,  there  is 
a  corporate  unity  which  is  real,  not  poetical.  Christ  is  the  head  of 

1  Rom.  5:12;  I  Cor.  15  : 22. 

2  Acts  17:  26. 

22 


THE   LOGOS   IN  HUMANITY  23 

the  church  and  the  church  is  the  body  of  which  Christ  is  the  life 
and  unifying  principle.  This  corporate  unity  furnishes  an  analogy 
for  the  wider  corporate  unity  of  the  race.  As  in  Christ  do  all  things 
consist,  and  as  from  the  Logos  all  known  beings  derive  their  life 
and  personality,  it  follows  that  the  solidarity  of  the  race  is  based 
upon  its  relation  to  the  Logos.  The  undercurrents  of  influence 
and  responsibility  have  their  reasonable  explanation  only  as  the 
Logos  is  regarded  as  the  fundamental  reality  of  humanity  without 
which  neither  the  race  nor  any  individual  of  the  race  can  exist.  The 
statement  of  the  French  preacher,  Bersier :  "In  my  individual  life 
I  feel  the  life  of  humanity,  in  my  blood  the  life-stream  of  the 
race,"  can  only  be  true  as  the  Logos  is  the  unifying  principle  of  the 
human  race. 

The  dependence  of  the  race  upon  the  Logos  is  not  merely 
nominal.  Each  individual  draws  life  and  personality  from  him.  I 
am  bound  to  my  neighbor  because  the  Logos  is  in  him  as  in  me ;  the 
brotherhood  of  man  is  assured  by  the  unity  of  the  race  in  Christ, 
and  yet  the  personalities  of  human  beings  differ  as  the  Logos  dif- 
ferentiates the  common  life  in  various  individuals. 

The  practical  bearing  of  this  doctrine  of  racial  solidarity  is 
to  be  seen  in  the  doctrine  of  redemption.  Christ's  essential  rela- 
tionship to  humanity  is  to  be  connected  with  the  biblical  teachings 
of  the  Atonement,  of  sonship,  of  vital  union  with  Christ.  Christ 
can  die  for  all,  and  it  is  possible  to  rescue  all,  because  he  came  as 
an  individual  into  a  corporate  humanity  which  he  himself  consti- 
tuted a  unity.  The  authors  of  Progressive  Orthodoxy  state  that 
the  articles  of  the  book  are  written  under  the  guidance  of  a  central 
and  vital  principle  of  Christianity — "the  reality  of  Christ's  personal 
relation  to  the  human  race  as  a  whole  and  to  every  member  of  it." 
Truly,  as  D.  W.  Simon  says:  "The  conception  of  the  organic 
unity,  or  solidarity  of  the  whole  of  humanity,  is  not  indeed  very 
distinctly  expressed  in  the  Scripture;  but  it  certainly  lies  at  the 
back  of  and  conditions  their  teachings,  especially  regarding  redemp- 
tion." If  the  individuals  of  the  human  race  had  had  no  vital  con- 
nection with  each  other,  salvation  by  incarnation  as  far  as  human 
wisdom  can  understand  would  have  been  impossible. 

Justin  Martyr  said  that  "the  whole  race  of  man  had  part  in  the 
Logos."  Here  is  to  be  found  a  reasonable  basis  for  the  Incarna- 
tion. It  was  possible  for  the  Word  to  become  flesh  in  the  human 


24  THE   INCARNATION  AND   MODERN  THOUGHT 

race  of  which  the  Word  was  the  principle  of  existence  and  unity. 
The  man  Christ  Jesus  was  thus  connected  with  the  whole  race,  an 
individual  among  individuals,  the  Word  made  flesh,  God  manifest 
in  humanity.  "His  individuality,"  says  Martensen,  "stands  in  the 
relation  to  all  other  human  individualities  in  which  the  center  of 
a  circle  stands  to  all  the  single  points  of  the  circle." 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   LOGOS    IN    THE    INDIVIDUAL— THE    EVOLUTIONARY    PROCESS 

The  conclusions  already  reached,  divine  Immanence,  divine  and 
human  kinship,  and  race  solidarity,  all  tend  to  overlook  the  differ- 
ences between  the  man  Christ  Jesus  and  other  men.  Christ  may 
be  a  more  striking  variation,  "an  individual  variation  of  apparently 
spontaneous  origin,"  but  is  he  also  different  in  type?  The  doc- 
trine of  evolution  also  seems  to  negative  the  spiritual  and  moral 
supremacy  of  Christ.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  say  that  the  human  race 
is  a  degeneration  and  that  Christ  is  a  restoration  to  type.  This 
would  satisfy  evolution,  but  not  Christianity.  Christ  is  something 
more  than  an  unfallen  Adam.  Neither  is  Christ,  according  to  a 
theistic  evolution,  a  "devolution"  from  above  foreign  to  the  con- 
stitution of  the  human  race.  The  Incarnation  was  not  a  deus  ex 
machind  into  the  arena  of  the  world,  previously  godless.  Theistic 
evolution  agrees  with  atheistic  evolution  that  there  has  never  been 
an  introduction  of  a  foreign  force  into  the  realm  of  nature,  but 
denies  that  what  you  find  anywhere  in  the  series  is  to  be  found  in 
germ  in  the  first  of  the  series,  and  that  the  new  spiritual  force  of 
the  Incarnation  was  a  recombination  or  expression  of  the  ele- 
ments of  the  past.  The  constant  increment  of  progress  in  the  evo- 
lution of  the  universe  is  added  by  the  immanent  Christ  in  whom 
all  things  consist. 

Progressive  revelation  is  a  method  of  God.  "When  the  ful- 
ness of  time  was  come,"  God  was  manifested  in  the  flesh.  A  prior 
personal  revelation  would  have  been  an  anachronism.  All  preced- 
ing manifestations  were  but  immature  developments  of  the  perfect 
revelation.  A  final  perfect  revelation  makes  the  evolutionary  pro- 
cess possess  significance.  Revelation  becomes  constantly  richer 
until  it  reaches  a  culmination  in  Christ;  or  rather  revelation  is  a 
great  momentum  in  history  forming  the  nucleus  of  a  religious 
future  culminating  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  Hegel  has  shown  that 
a  historical  person  was  needed  to  reveal  to  the  common  conscious- 
ness the  unity  of  the  divine  and  human  nature.  The  Idea  must  be 
something  seen,  the  Divine  must  appear  in  the  form  of  what  is 
Immediate.  But  what  is  true  of  one  phase  of  the  divine  revela- 

25 


26  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

tion  in  Hegel's  system,  is  true  of  all  revelation.  As  Van  Dyke  says 
in  his  book,  The  Gospel  for  an  Age  of  Doubt:  "Each  successive  step 
in  this  manifestation  realizes  and  exhibits  something  higher  and 
more  perfect,  to  which  all  that  has  gone  before  has  pointed,  and 
in  which  the  potentialities  of  all  previous  developments  are  not 
only  summed  up,  but  raised  to  a  new  power." 

Now  if  Christ  was  unique,  there  are  but  two  solutions  of  the 
problem  of  his  appearance:  either  he  was  an  absolute  interference 
in  the  realm  of  nature,  or  else  a  term  in  the  sequence  of  natural 
causes.  The  former  solution  has  already  been  negatived.  The 
latter  solution  can  only  be  accepted  as  the  uniqueness  of  Jesus  is 
left  unimpaired.  It  is  admitted  that  in  nature  there  have  been 
great  epochs  in  the  process  of  development.  At  the  present,  three 
great  crises  at  least  in  the  evolutionary  process  are  recognized, 
where  there  have  been  no  known  antecedents :  the  origin  of  matter 
or  of  material  reactions  under  the  present  system,  the  origin  of 
life,  and  the  origin  of  self-conscious  life.  From  the  standpoint  of 
atheistic  evolution,  these  are  unexplainable  chasms  in  the  process. 
Nor  indeed,  are  these  all  of  the  unexplainable  changes.  Any  varia- 
tion that  marks  a  higher  stage  of  development  has  no  scientific 
explanation.  Science  has  accounted  for  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
but  not  for  the  arrival  of  the  fittest. 

Le  Conte,  in  Religion  and  Science,  thus  gives  his  acknowledg- 
ment of  this  lack  on  the  part  of  science : 

My  own  very  strong  conviction  ....  is  that  no  theory  of  evolution  yet 
proposed  explains  the  origin  of  species;  that  the  factors  mentioned  above 
(pressure  of  external  conditions,  improvement  of  organs  by  use,  divergent 
variation  of  offspring,  and  survival  of  the  fittest)  may  produce  varieties,  but 
not  species,  much  less  genera,  orders  and  classes;  that  the  great  factor  of 
change  and  the  real  cause  of  evolution  is  still  unknown.  Evolution  may  be 
the  universal  formal  law  of  the  Universe  (of  time)  but  the  cause  of  the  law 
is  yet  undiscovered. 

All  that  Christianity  asks  is  that  the  increments  of  progress 
be  denominated  after  the  manner  of  Lotze — continual  divine  rein- 
forcements. The  pivotal  question  is  not  what  is  the  process  of  de- 
velopment, but  what  is  the  origin  of  any  variation ;  and  this  is  to  be 
answered  according  to  New  Testament  teachings,  by  affirming 
that  the  Logos  is  both  the  principle  of  all  existences  and  the  cause 
of  differentiation.  Christ  is  not  then  to  be  placed  in  a  natural 


THE   LOGOS   IN  THE   INDIVIDUAL  2J 

sequence.  He  is  the  beginning  of  a  variation,  "the  firstborn  among 
many  brethren,"  a  new  and  original  force  in  the  world  added  by  the 
Logos  in  whom  all  things  consist.  As  a  beginning  of  a  new  species, 
as  a  new  order  in  the  natural  universe,  Christ  is  not  contrary  to  the 
course  of  nature,  but  is  to  be  expected  where  three  crises  par 
excellence  have  already  occurred.  Thus  was  Christ  unique,  as 
George  Harris  in  Moral  Evolution  says :  "In  many  respects  Jesus 
was  a  distinct  type ;  ....  as  transcending  all  others  he  was  a  new 
cause,  the  power  of  God  in  higher  potency." 

Although  in  evolution  the  perfect  is  at  the  end  of  the  series, 
Christ  came  in  the  course  of  human  history  because  he  was  the 
beginning  of  the  variation.  Nevertheless,  the  development  of  the 
race  is  not  contrary  to  the  usual  evolutionary  processes.  Evolution 
is  ever  working  for  the  perfection  of  the  species,  while  the  indi- 
viduals seem  to  be  lost  in  the  process.  The  kingdom  of  God  adheres 
to  the  first  principle  but  reverses  the  second;  there  is  to  be  both 
a  social  and  an  individual  completion.  All  things  on  earth  and  in 
heaven  find  their  culmination  in  Christ.  All  things  were  created 
unto  («s)  him.  The  kingdom  of  God,  as  the  parables  of  the 
Sower  and  the  Leaven  and  the  Mustard  Seed  evince,  is  an  evo- 
lutionary process.  It  does  not  come  ready  made  as  according  to 
Jewish  conception.  He,  who  is  the  commencement  of  a  new 
order,  will  be  reincarnated  in  human  beings,  until  the  whole  body, 
filled  with  his  fulness,  shall  mark  the  culmination  and  perfection 
of  the  Christian  evolutionary  development. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  LOGOS  IN  THE  INDIVIDUAL— PSYCHOLOGICAL  PRINCIPLES 

The  doctrine  of  the  two  natures  in  Christ  has  always  been  the 
insoluble  difficulty  for  any  Christology.  Perhaps  it  is  always 
wiser,  if  one  accepts  the  doctrine,  frankly  to  acknowledge  ignorance 
as  does  Bishop  Morehouse,  who  says :  "I  answer  at  once,  that 
the  manner  of  this  wondrous  hypostatic  union  is  a  mystery  too 
great  for  me."  The  formula  of  the  Council  of  Chalcedon  is  still 
valid  as  a  definition  of  the  two  natures,  though  it  has  been 
variously  interpreted,  even  as  is  the  constitution  of  a  state,  in 
ways  un thought  of  by  the  original  formulators.  A  part  of  it 
reads : 

One  and  the  same  Christ,  ....  manifested  in  two  natures,  without  con- 
fusion, without  conversion,  indivisible,  inseparable,  the  distinction  of  natures 
being  by  no  means  abolished  by  the  union,  but  rather  the  property  of  each 
preserved  and  combined  into  one  person  and  one  hypostasis. 

A  conjunction  or  a  blending  is  not  to  be  thought  of.  There  is 
interpenetration  of  natures,  but  each  retains  its  own  properties  so 
that  it  can  be  said,  "The  same  perfect  in  Deity,  and  the  same  per- 
fect in  humanity,  truly  God,  and  the  same  truly  man." 

The  serious  objection  to  the  formula  of  Chalcedon  is  not  that 
Jesus  is  made  an  anomalous  personality,  for  mystery  is  to  be 
expected  in  the  person  of  Christ,  but  that  the  living  unity  of  Christ's 
person  is  virtually  denied.  The  Bible  knows  nothing  of  the  union 
into  one  of  the  human  and  divine  natures,  nor  of  the  attempted 
combination  of  the  attributes  of  the  divine  personality  and  the 
attributes  of  the  human  in  ways  impossible  to  conceive.  Even  the 
best  statement  made  of  the  union,  such  a  one  for  example  as  Van 
Oosterzee's,  "Both  natures  have  communicated  their  properties  to 
one  and  the  same  person,"  has  little  content  on  account  of  the 
difficulty  of  separating  in  definition  "personality"  and  "nature." 

The  practical,  that  is  a  soteriological  as  well  as  psychological, 
problem  in  connection  with  the  Chalcedon  formula  is  to  give  due 
prominence  to  the  human  nature  of  Christ.  There  must  be  a  human 
nature  in  Christ,  because  "that  is  not  saved  which  is  not  assumed." 
There  must  also  be  a  human  personality  which  is  a  very  essential 

28 


THE   LOGOS   IN   THE   INDIVIDUAL  2Q 

of  the  human  nature  assumed.  Even  Christian  faith,  irrespective 
of  Christian  knowledge,  demands  that  an  emphasis  be  laid  upon  the 
human  nature  of  Christ.  So  says  Hutton:  "To  me,  it  would  be 
far  more  painful  to  believe  in  the  unreality  of  Christ's  finite  nature 
and  human  condition,  than  to  give  up  Christianity  altogether." 

The  reformed  Christology,  seeking  to  remedy  the  defect  in  cur- 
rent christological  thought,  emphasized  the  human  nature  of  Christ, 
holding  to  the  doctrine  of  the  two  estates.  This  system  was  better 
than  the  scholastic  view  which  tended  to  evaporate  the  human 
nature  of  Christ,  and  better  than  the  view  of  Luther  which  tended 
to  deify  it;  but  it  failed  to  retain  unity  in  Christ's  personality.  Nor 
will  any  system,  as  long  as  due  prominence  is  given  to  both  natures, 
succeed  in  removing  the  antinomies  of  divine  omniscience  and 
human  ignorance,  divine  omnipotence  and  human  weakness,  divine 
omnipresence  and  human  localization — in  fact  the  finite  and  the 
infinite  as  predicated  of  the  same  being.  If,  however,  a  real  unity 
is  obtained,  it  is  done  at  the  expense  of  one  of  the  natures.  If 
the  divine  nature  is  emphasized,  then  the  human  is  unreal  and  acci- 
dental, existing  only  in  name;  if  the  human,  then  God  is  not 
present  except  in  the  manner  present  in  all  good  men,  though  in 
greater  power.  The  formula,  "two  natures  and  one  person,"  has 
swayed  either  to  Adoptianism  and  a  double  personality,  or  to 
Nihilianism,  the  destruction  of  the  humanity.  On  the  one  side, 
the  human  is  emphasized;  either  it  receives  a  grace  by  which  its 
natural  properties  are  magnified,  or,  the  humanity  is  supple- 
mented by  the  divine.  On  the  other  side,  there  is,  as  Irenaeus  said, 
an  occasional  "quiescence"  of  the  divine  Word  to  allow  of  the 
human  trials ;  or,  as  Luther  affirmed  in  his  earlier  teaching,  there 
was  during  the  earthly  period  a  limitation  of  the  participation  of 
the  human  nature  in  the  divine  attributes ;  or  else  Christ,  or  the 
divine  personality,  exercised  a  deliberate  act  of  self-control  in 
abstaining  from  the  use  of  the  divine  attributes. 

There  has  been  ever  a  demand  for  a  closer  union  of  the  divine 
and  human  in  Christ  and  the  need  has  never  been  satisfied.  Reac- 
tion has  always  been  succeeded  by  another  attempt.  The  only 
solution  will  be  reached  when  the  conception  of  the  two  natures  is 
dropped.  That  which  the  Bible  does  not  demand  and  which  is 
repugnant  to  psychological  science  must  give  place  to  an  adequate 
and  reasonable  statement  of  the  person  of  Christ.  In  some  way 


30  THE  INCARNATION  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT 

Christ  must  be  considered  human  as  a  whole  and  divine  as  a  whole. 
The  human  mind  cannot  as  a  human  stereoscope  combine  the  two 
natures  in  a  composite  picture.  The  result  is  confusion. 

The  difficulty  is  not  one  alone  of  the  person  of  Christ.  A  return 
must  be  made  to  the  idea  of  God.  As  long  as  God  is  the  external 
architect  of  the  world,  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of  Christ  as  more  than 
docetic,  the  flesh  only  a  manifestation  of  the  divine.  But  when 
God  is  conceived  as  immanent,  and  the  Logos  as  the  eternal  prin- 
ciple of  humanity,  the  manifestation  of  the  Logos  in  the  personality 
of  Christ  is  more  reasonable.  The  human  and  the  divine  are  not 
contradictories,  nor  entities  exclusive  of  each  other.  Truly  does 
President  Schurman  say : 

A  closer  examination  may  hereafter  show  that  the  Infinite  Spirit  includes 
the  finite,  as  the  idea  of  an  organism  embraces  within  a  single  life  a  plurality 
of  members  and  functions ;  in  which  case  the  finite  and  infinite  would  be  no 
longer  contradictories  and  the  contrast  they  imply  would  convince  none  but 
the  unthinking  of  the  incommensurability  of  God  with  the  capacity  of  the 
mind  of  man. 

The  appearance  of  Christ  then  as  the  Word  made  flesh  may 
thus  be  explained :  The  Logos  is  the  principle  of  all  existence  and, 
in  the  process  of  nature's  history,  he  is  ever  going  out  in  self -mani- 
festation in  response  to  the  demands  of  his  own  nature.  In  accord- 
ance with  this  demand,  the  Logos  in  which  all  is  sustained 
was  organized  under  the  law  of  space  and  time  into  a 
human  individuality,  having  individuated  his  own  life  into  a  per- 
sonality subject  to  the  conditions  of  all  human  personalities.  The 
early  church  Father,  Marcellus,  seemed  to  present  this  view  when 
he  said,  that  personality  in  Christ  arose  by  circumspection  in 
divinity. 

Christ  is  man,  an  individual  man,  as  truly  man  as  is  any  man. 
The  Logos  unincarnated  is  the  basis  of  all  humanity,  but  as 
incarnate,  manifested  in  one  personality.  Yet  Christ  was  not  a 
separate  entity  from  the  Logos  as  are  other  men.  There  was  a 
continuity  of  subject  in  the  Logos  which  connected  the  two  forms 
of  manifestation.  Man  unlimited  would  not  be  God,  but  the 
Logos  manifested  in  humanity  is  a  man.  The  Incarnation  was 
therefore  no  assumption  of  human  nature  or  a  clothing  of  the 
divine  soul  in  a  fleshy  garment,  nor  the  incarnation  of  the  human 
life  of  God  as  some  have  lately  said — for  God's  whole  life  was 


THE  LOGOS   IN  THE  INDIVIDUAL  31 

given — nor  was  it  strictly  speaking  the  humanification  of  the 
Logos,  for  the  Logos  was  already  human  in  nature  and  personality. 
Human  nature  is  not  foreign  to  the  Logos.  The  Incarnation  was 
the  appearnce  of  the  Logos  life  within  the  normal  conditions  and 
limitations  of  humanity. 

A  correct  definition  of  personality  does  not  oppose,  but  rather 
favors  the  idea  just  presented.  If  the  Logos  is  not  personal,  as 
Servetus  taught,  there  could  be  in  Christ  only  a  human  personality 
as  in  all  men  by  reason  of  the  energizing  of  the  Logos ;  but  there 
could  be  no  God-man,  different  in  form  from  other  men.  But  God 
is  personal,  and  as  such  possesses  "individuality,  self-consciousness, 
self-determination,  love,  and  as  the  result  of  their  living  inter- 
action, character."  "Is  personality  involving  self -consciousness  and 
self-determination  predicable  of  the  divine  being?"  Paulsen  and 
Pfleiderer  say  that  God  cannot  by  any  possibility  be  infra-personal. 
Yet  he  can  be  supra-personal;  that  is,  he  can  be  all  we  know  of 
personality  and  much  more. 

Granting  personality  in  the  Godhead,  we  can  agree  with  Orr, 
who,  though  opposed  to  the  general  idea  of  kenotism,  says  that 
"what  is  denied  is  that  the  personality  of  the  Divine  Son  cannot  also 
become  in  the  incarnate  condition  a  truly  human  one."  Julius 
Miiller,  as  quoted  by  Van  Dyke,  suggests  that  by  the  divine  self- 
limitation  in  the  Incarnation  the  distinctive  attributes  of  person- 
ality are  actually  unified,  like  two  circles  which  have  a  common 
center.  The  idea  is  somewhat  mechanical,  as  also  is  every  idea  of 
kenotism,  not  purely  ethical,  but  the  gist  of  the  thought  remains 
that  personality  human  and  divine  is  of  the  same  kind. 

The  kenotic  method  of  statement  is  but  the  obverse  side  of  the 
view  already  presented;  that  is,  it  proceeds  from  the  side  of  the 
concealment  of  the  divine  life  instead  of  the  manifestation.  It  is 
therefore  manifestly  true  but  not  the  whole  of  the  truth.  It  pro- 
ceeds from  the  side  of  the  contraction  of  the  divine  life  in  human 
form  rather  than  the  expression  of  it.  Dorner  is  very  strong  in 
his  belief  that  "full  justice  can  never  be  done  to  the  humanity  in 
Christology,  until  the  self -limitation,  the  self-exanition  of  God 
be  recognized."  The  kenosis  is  a  self -divestment  of  those  natural 
prerogatives  that  pertain  to  the  divine  nature  and  the  divine  man- 
ner of  existence,  and  a  contraction  to  the  dimensions  of  humanity. 

What    this    limitation    signified    could    scarcely    be    discovered 


32  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

except  inferentially  from  the  biblical  record,  but  it  is  certain  that 
Jesus  did  not  live  habitually  in  the  exercise  of  the  metaphysical 
powers  of  deity,  such  as  omniscience,  omnipotence,  and  omni- 
presence; but  it  is  also  certain  that  he  possessed  in  full  the  divine 
moral  qualities.  But  the  lack  of  biblical  teaching  does  not  prove 
the  doctrine  of  kenotism  untrue.  The  kenosis  is  the  answer  of  the 
faith  of  many  believers  to  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  Son  of  God, 
and  to  the  reality  of  Christ's  human  nature. 

The  expression  of  the  Logos  in  human  personality  with  origina- 
tion in  the  conception  did  not  assure  the  full  realization  of  that 
personality  from  the  beginning.  The  Logos  is  not  divided  up 
mathematically  in  space,  but  the  fulness  of  the  divine  life  is  every- 
where present.  Christ  is  as  fully  the  God-man  at  infancy  as  at 
manhood,  though  at  a  different  stage  of  development.  There  was 
no  human  nature  not  assumed,  because  the  human  was  the  divine 
under  the  laws  of  development. 

The  Incarnation  occurred  at  conception,  but  the  development 
was  not  complete  until  exaltation.  As  the  "new  man"  in  the 
Christian  grows  to  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ,  so  the  new 
life,  as  centered  in  Jesus,  developed.  Jesus  grew — grew  physically, 
intellectually,  morally,  spiritually,  passing  through  every  stage 
from  immaturity  to  perfection.  He  "learned  obedience;"  he  "be- 
came perfect."  In  the  process  of  this  development,  his  experiences 
not  only  corresponded  to  the  usual  human  experiences,  but  were 
the  same.  He  endured  temptation.  He  prayed  to  obtain  strength. 
He  exercised  trust  in  God.  He  worked  miracles  through  divinely 
mediated  power.  There  was  unity  in  Christ's  nature,  not  omni- 
science along  with  human  ignorance,  but  human  ignorance  alone 
since  Christ  was  human.  There  were  not  two  wills,  one  the  divine 
will  and  the  other  the  human  always  subject  to  the  divine  will;  or 
one  "productive  freedom"  and  the  other  "potence  of  freedom" 
beside  it;  but  one  will  without  which  the  unity  of  the  personality 
would  suffer. 

Nowhere  is  the  unity  of  Christ's  nature  more  apparent  than  in 
the  self -consciousness  which  he  possessed,  in  which  he  recognized 
himself  to  be  but  one  personality;  and  the  unity  of  self -conscious- 
ness can  exist  only  when  there  is  a  unity  of  nature.  In  Christ  the 
self -consciousness  developed  as  the  personality  developed  in  the 
new  organism.  During  the  first  part  of  that  life  the  consciousness 


THE   LOGOS   IN  THE   INDIVIDUAL  33 

of  his  divine  character  and  mission  "  followed  the  same  law  of 
development  as  his  other  faculties,"  and  so  "his  divine  son- 
ship  ....  was  at  first  a  matter  of  faith  rather  than  knowledge  or 
immediate  revelation." 

Thus  are  the  unity  of  nature  and  limitations  of  activities,  and 
the  process  of  development,  all  consonant  with  the  theses  of  psy- 
chology, and  at  the  same  time  consistent  with  biblical  teachings. 
Grant  that  the  Logos  is  immanent  in  the  universe,  that  the  divine 
and  human  are  akin,  that  the  Logos  is  the  principle  of  the  human 
race,  that  a  new  center  of  life  is  possible  by  the  ever-energizing 
presence  of  the  Logos;  then,  the  development  of  the  Christ-life 
under  psychological  conditions  is  manifestly  the  divine  way. 


CHAPTER  VI 

JESUS  AND  THE  LOGOS 

Among  the  many  questions  that  arise  upon  the  acceptance  of 
the  vital  relationship  of  the  Logos  and  Jesus,  one  of  the  first  is, 
How  does  Jesus  differ  from  other  men?  The  first  answer  to  this 
might  be  that  Jesus  is  God's  son.  Yet  sonship  is  chiefly  ethical  in 
its  content,  and  there  can  be  no  double  or  puzzling  sense  in  which 
the  word  is  applied  both  to  Jesus  and  to  the  believer.  Christ  as  son 
is  that  which  we  ought  to  be  and  are  destined  to  become.  He  is 
the  prototype  and  ideal  of  man  at  his  highest  development. 

Jesus  is  also  the  ideal  of  holiness  and  sinlessness.  Humanity 
as  capable  of  divinity  never  reached  its  completion  until  Jesus  lived. 
Christ  during  the  years  of  earthly  history  passed  through  the  ideal 
man's  eternal  history.  Such  holiness,  such  completion  of  humanity, 
such  ideal  history,  can  be  reached  only  by  one  who  is  the  Logos 
incarnate,  and  not  by  one  in  whom  God  indwells  as  in  any 
believer.  Sonship,  holiness,  perfection,  are  but  the  results  and 
expressions  of  the  divine  life,  lived  under  human  limitations.  Yet 
ethical  union  with  the  Father  must  not  be  made  synonymous  with 
unity  of  nature.  Hutton  in  his  essays  makes  this  mistake  of  con- 
fusing the  effect  with  the  cause,  when  he  says : 

The  ultimate  distinction  between  Christ's  human  nature  and  our  own  lay 
not,  it  seems  to  me,  in  any  exemption  from  human  ignorance,  sensitiveness, 
temptation,  but  in  the  ultimate  divinity  expressed  in  His  free  will,  which 
moulded  itself  according  to  the  Father's  will  without  a  moment's  trembling 
in  the  balance. 

One  fundamental  difference  between  Jesus  and  all  other  men  is 
that  Christ  was  the  firstborn  without  whom  none  other  ever  attained 
unto  sonship  and  eternal  life.  He  as  son  is  the  source  of  all 
human  sonship,  as  perfect,  the  source  of  all  perfection,  as  holy,  the 
source  of  all  human  holiness.  But  the  supreme  difference,  which 
is  the  source  of  all  differences,  is  that  in  man  personality  and  sub- 
stance form  a  distinct  entity,  while  Christ's  nature  is  identical  with 
that  of  God.  In  the  one,  the  Logos  is  the  sustaining  principle 
separate  from  the  human  being  sustained  but  without  which  the 
personality  would  not  exist;  in  the  other,  the  Logos  is  identical 

34 


JESUS  AND   THE  LOGOS  35 

with  the  human  being  formed.  In  one,  therefore,  independence  of 
action,  ethical  separation,  is  possible;  in  the  other,  the  will  is  con- 
tinuative  with  the  volition  of  the  Logos,  and  the  ethical  union  with 
the  Father  ever  the  same. 

The  idea  of  God  must  be  more  ethical  and  less  metaphysical. 
Immutability  and  immobility  are  not  the  same  in  God.  It  is  not  the 
sameness  of  expression  that  marks  the  immutability  of  God,  but 
the  continuity  of  underlying  purpose.  Or  as  Canon  Gore  says: 
"We  can  readily  conceive  that  the  attributes  and  powers  of  God 
must  be  more  wholly,  than  is  the  case  with  us,  under  the  control  of 
the  will.  They  must  be  less  mechanical  and  more  voluntary." 
However,  the  difficulty  which  adherents  of  the  doctrine  of  kenotism 
meet  begins  at  the  gateway  of  creation  itself,  for  the  very  creation 
and  sustentation  of  matter  is  a  part  of  that  self -limitation  of  God 
that  reaches  its  culmination  in  the  person  of  Christ.  Either  God  is 
not  immanent,  or  else  there  is  no  inherent  difficulty  in  supposing 
that  the  Word  became  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us. 

The  Logos  is  the  source  of  life  from  which  all  things  derive 
their  existence;  and  yet  the  universe  is  not  an  extension  of  the 
divine  substance.  The  category  of  space  does  not  apply  to  the 
Logos  for  the  fulness  of  his  divinity  is  everywhere  as  an  ever- 
present  factor.  But  the  Logos  has  not  exhausted  himself  in  the 
universe.  He  is  immanent  and  transcendent  both,  and  therefore 
infinite  in  his  resources.  The  Logos  is  God's  self -revelation,  and 
in  the  Logos  is  the  totality  of  God's  revelations,  now  in  nature, 
now  in  humanity,  and  finally  in  a  person;  but  the  resourceful 
energy  of  the  Logos  possesses  further  possibilities  of  revelation. 
If  the  Christ  is  the  upward  movement  of  the  fundamental  life 
beneath,  not  exhausted  by  this  one  germination  and  growth,  might 
not  even  Aquinas  be  correct  in  believing  that  more  than  one  incar- 
nation was  possible,  though  only  one  was  accomplished? 

The  conclusion  of  this  method  of  presentation  is  so  apparent 
that  it  scarcely  needs  statement — that  while  the  Logos  was  on 
earth  in  the  limitations  of  humanity,  he  was,  as  ever,  exerting  his 
world-control,  and  continuing  in  his  eternal  relations  with  the 
Father.  Any  other  form  of  the  theory  of  depotentiation  is  at  least 
subject  to  three  grave  objections :  that  it  changes  the  immanent 
relations  of  the  Trinity;  that  it  makes  finite  what  is  infinite  (not 
to  speak  of  the  impossible  return  of  the  finite  to  the  infinite)  ; 


36  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

and  that  it  fails  to  explain  the  center  of  world-control  during  the 
Incarnation.  The  world-control  certainly  during  the  Incarnation 
was  not  vested  in  Jesus,  nor  is  there  any  indication  that  it  was 
personally  transferred  to  the  Father. 

The  possibility  of  the  twofold  mode  of  life  is  met  by  the  objec- 
tion that  there  could  not  be  two  centers  of  consciousness,  or  that 
the  kenosis  was  not  real;  but  the  practical  answer  to  all  meta- 
physical difficulties  is  to  point  to  the  fact  that  in  his  exalted  life, 
Christ  had  this  twofold  mode  of  existence,  being  the  unifying 
principle  of  the  universe  and  yet  locally  manifested  in  his  heavenly 
form.  That  the  condition  of  the  exalted  state  cannot  also  be  the 
condition  of  the  incarnate  state,  is  what  some  do  not  seem  to  see 
although  it  is  clear  that  the  presence  of  Christ  in  heaven,  while 
being  a  local  and  visible  presence,  was  not  necessarily  limited  to  the 
circumference  of  its  human  form.  Jesus  was  the  Logos,  that  is, 
the  fulness  of  the  Godhead,  but  the  Bible  does  not  say  the  Logos  is 
Jesus  and  Jesus  never  says,  I  am  the  Logos.  Rather  the  interest  is 
ethical,  and  John  says  that  "these  are  written  that  ye  may  believe 
that  Jesus  is  the  Christ  (not  that  Jesus  is  the  Logos)  and  that 
believing  ye  may  have  life  in  his  name."  But  the  Gospel  of  John 
begins  with  the  significant  statement,  the  Logos  became  flesh. 

This  view  as  presented  above  is  neither  so  new  nor  unusual, 
though  with  few  exceptions  never  developed  into  a  system. 
Athanasius  says  that  "the  Logos,  while  present  in  the  human  body 
and  himself  quickening  it,  was,  without  inconsistency,  quickening 
the  universe  as  well  and  was  in  every  process  of  nature."  At  the 
Protestant  Reformation,  when  the  subject  of  the  person  of  Christ 
was  most  discussed,  this  phase  of  the  theme  was  approximated  by 
the  old  Lutheran  theology  maintaining  that  the  Logos  while  united 
with  humanity  remained  unchanged  and  governed  the  world  omni- 
presently.  But  what  was  regarded  as  a  logical  conclusion  invalidated 
the  doctrine,  that  as  all  of  the  Logos  must  have  been  incar- 
nated, therefore  the  flesh  of  Christ  must  have  been  everywhere 
present.  Calvin  seemed  more  truly  to  speak  when  he  wrote  in  his 
Institutes:  "The  Son  of  God  descended  in  a  wonderful  manner 
from  heaven,  but  so  that  he  did  not  leave  heaven." 

Of  late  there  have  been  many  direct  and  indirect  references  to 
the  subject  of  the  double  life,  or  more  properly  the  single  life 
with  a  personal  development  under  the  conditions  of  time  and 


JESUS   AND   THE   LOGOS  37 

space.  Dr.  George  Jamieson  in  A  Revised  Theology  says  that 
"while  the  Logos  was  represented  upon  the  earth  in  the  person  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  yet  the  Logos  remained  in  his  entirety  in 
heaven."  And  James  Orr,  while  denying  all  kenotic  theories, 
makes  this  remarkable  statement :  "There  is  an  immanent  presence 
of  God  in  nature.  So  the  Divine  Son  took  upon  him  our  nature 
with  its  human  limits,  but  above  and  beyond  that,  if  we  may  so 
express  it,  was  the  vast  'over-soul  of  his  Divine  consciousness.' " 
The  point  of  view  is  immaterial.  Whether  it  is  the  "over-soul"  as 
representing  the  action  of  the  transcendent  God,  or  the  "inner- 
soul"  as  representing  the  immanent  God,  the  life  within  and  be- 
neath is  the  ever-present  Logos-life,  ever  rising  in  more  or  less 
permanent  forms  as  the  manifestation  of  God,  but  manifested  at 
the  end  of  the  times  as  Christ  in  the  flesh. 


CHAPTER  VII 

JESUS  AND  THE  FATHER 

Bruce  has  said  in  his  Kingdom  of  God,  that  "a  thoroughly 
Christian  idea  of  God  is  still  a  desideratum,  and  when  the  church 
has  reached  it,  the  kingdom  of  God  shall  have  come  in  power." 
This  is  paralleled  by  the  statement  of  one  of  the  authors  of  Lux 
Mundi  that  "every  moral  reformation  within  the  church  was  a 
protest  of  the  conscience  against  unworthy  views  of  God."  Not 
only  does  our  view  of  Christ  react  upon  our  view  of  God,  but  the 
preconceived  and  mechanical  notions  of  God  have  ever  driven  the 
church  to  behold  in  Christ  the  incarnation  of  a  philosophically 
conceived  God. 

The  Gnostic  idea  of  the  Bythos,  the  neo-Platonlc  idea  of  the 
ov,  and  Kenan's  phrase  "Our  Father,  the  Abyss,"  are  all  of  the 
same  stamp.  A  definition  of  a  mathematical  infinity,  as  applied  to 
God,  is  full  of  contradictions,  and  brings  us  to  practical  atheism. 
If  the  difference  between  God  and  man  is  one  between  the  infinite 
and  finite,  then  Mansel  and  Spencer  are  right  in  teaching  that  God 
may  be  different  from  our  conception  of  him,  and  Spencer,  in  con- 
cluding that  the  forms  of  human  conduct  are  to  be  regulated  irre- 
spective of  him. 

In  answer  to  the  philosophical  idea  of  God,  the  believer  first 
says  with  Fiske  that  the  "total  elimination  of  anthropomorphism 
from  the  idea  of  God  is  impossible;"  then  adds,  that  anthropomor- 
phism is  not  only  necessary  but  correspondent  with  the  fact.  He 
concludes  that  "God  is  eternally  and  essentially  God-man.  Man  is 
eternally  and  essentially  man-God."  He  does  not  need  to  make 
Christ  real  by  saying  that  in  Christ  is  "the  human  life  of  God," 
nor  to  see  in  Christ  the  incarnation  of  the  human  qualities  of  God. 
He  affirms  that  God  and  man  are  essentially  one,  and  that  a  correct 
idea  of  God  is  possible  in  an  ideal  human  personality. 

The  complete  revelation  of  God  cannot  be  made  except  through 
a  human  personality  who  shall  be  God  in  the  flesh,  revealing  God's 
eternal  power  and  divinity.  Only  a  personality  could  reveal  God's 
personality  and  moral  character.  The  Incarnation  is  a  climax  in 
revelation.  If  therefore  a  self -revelation  is  an  immanent  necessity 

38 


JESUS   AND   THE   FATHER  39 

to  God,  then  is  the  Incarnation  the  goal  of  nature.  If  the  idea  of 
God  implies  creation,  it  implies  the  Incarnation. 

Christianity  is  not  an  excrescence.  God's  eternal  plan  was  formed 
with  reference  to  Christ;  creation  and  redemption  are  correlated. 
The  purpose  of  the  Incarnation  is  co-ordinate  with  other  purposes, 
and  the  universe  has  as  the  completion  of  its  idea  the  manifestation 
of  God  in  Christ.  Whether  the  Logos  would  have  become  flesh 
irrespective  of  sin  cannot  be  answered  except  on  a  hypothesis  con- 
trary to  fact.  Yet  an  affirmative  answer  seems  possible  from  the 
fact  that  Jesus  accomplishes  more  for  believers  than  to  restore 
them  to  the  state  of  primeval  man.  The  Logos  in  whom  all 
existed  needed  objective  presentation.  As  Calvin  says:  "Had  man 
remained  free  from  all  taint,  he  was  of  too  humble  a  condition  to 
penetrate  to  God  without  a  mediator." 

Christ  is  therefore  an  ethical  revelation  to  the  world.  God 
is  to  be  interpreted  through  Christ,  and  the  Son  is  a  manifestation 
of  the  moral  and  personal  attributes  of  God.  Christ,  as  the  image 
of  God's  substance,  was  the  revelation  of  the  essential  personality 
of  God.  That  which  is  essential  in  God  was  not  revealed  in 
Christ  by  examples  of  wonder-working  and  knowledge  and 
ability  to  annihilate  space,  which  miraculous  power  was  as  di- 
vinely mediated  as  in  any  other  man,  for  finitum  capax  infiniti  can 
never  be  true  as  respects  the  metaphysical  qualities. 

God  is  love,  and  Christ  was  the  incarnation  of  love.  Such  an 
idea  of  God,  Dorner  strenuously  advocates — "viewing  God,  not  as 
mere  holiness  and  righteousness,  nor  as  mere  goodness  and  com- 
municableness  in  general,  but  as  love  which  possesses  power  over 
itself — in  one  word,  as  holy  love."  Then  may  the  Incarnation  be 
a  concentration  of  love,  a  qualitative  localizing  of  God  in  humanity. 
Hayden  always  manifested  God  in  sweet  melodies,  because,  he 
said,  "The  divinity  should  always  be  expressed  by  love  and  good- 
ness." The  essential  part  of  God's  nature  is  not  in  those  qualities 
that  pass  our  comprehension,  but  in  his  ethical  nature  which  is 
summed  up  in  the  word  Father,  of  which  Christ  in  his  sonship  is 
a  true  revelation. 

Love  sacrifices,  and  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  is  the  revealing  of 
the  eternal  sacrifice  of  God.  Nowhere  in  the  New  Testament  is 
the  Incarnation  spoken  of  as  if  the  matter  of  wonder  was  in  the 
method  of  the  Incarnation  rather  than  the  motive.  It  is  always 


40  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

"so  loved  that  he  gave;"  "for  the  suffering  of  death  crowned  with 
glory  and  honor ;"  "let  this  same  mind  be  in  you."  It  was  the  love 
of  the  Father  that  necessitated  the  revelation  of  the  Son.  The  form 
depended  upon  the  purpose  to  be  accomplished;  and  since  human 
beings  were  to  be  saved,  the  abode  was  established  "in  the  flesh." 

"The  very  God,"  think,  Abib ;  dost  thou  think  ? 
So,  the  All-Great,  were  the  All-Loving  too — 
So,  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice 
Saying,  "O  heart,  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here ! 
Face,  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself ! 
Thou  hast  no  power  nor  may'st  conceive  of  mine : 
But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  myself  to  love, 
And  thou  must  love  me  who  have  died  for  thee !" 


CHAPTER   VIII 

JESUS  AND  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

The  New  Testament  plainly  teaches  that  believers  are  not  only 
to  be  transformed  into  the  image  of  Christ,  being  created  anew 
after  the  divine  image;  but  that  they  are  even  now  vitally  united 
with  him.  Believers  are  "in  Christ;"  they  are  the  branches,  he  the 
vine;  he  is  the  head,  they  the  body.  We  are  planted  together 
(O-V^VTOL)  in  the  likeness  of  his  death.  From  the  world  we  are 
"added  unto  the  Lord"  rinding  in  him  the  channel  of  the  com- 
munication of  spiritual  life,  and  in  him  not  only  a  fellowship,  but  a 
communion  of  nature. 

This  union  is  consummated  by  the  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
upon  the  human  nature.  The  early  church  looked  much  upon  the 
expression  of  the  presence  of  the  Spirit  in  the  external  manifesta- 
tions similar  to  those  of  Pentecost;  but  under  a  present  psychology 
as  well  as  the  biblical  teaching,  since  "The  wind  bloweth  where 
it  listeth,  and  thou  hearest  the  sound  thereof,  but  canst  not  tell 
whence  it  cometh,  and  whither  it  goeth,"  it  is  to  be  concluded  that 
the  immanent  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  human  nature  is  below 
consciousness.  The  beginning  of  this  new  life  and  vital  union  to 
Christ  is  "of  the  Spirit."  We  are  born  of  the  Spirit,  and  it  is  the 
Spirit  that  quickeneth.  The  Spirit  is  not  only  the  medium  of  this 
change,  but  also  is  the  assurance  of  new  life.  Christ  is  in  us  by 
the  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  is  the  creative  and  unifying 
principle  of  the  new  moral  life  whereby  we  become  partakers 
of  the  divine  nature  in  Christ. 

But  that  which  the  Holy  Spirit  accomplishes  for  believers  as 
the  agent  of  regeneration  and  growth  he  accomplished  in  Jesus. 
The  Bible  never  represents  the  birth,  growth,  and  consummation  of 
Christ's  life  as  due  to  the  divine  nature  united  to  the  human,  but 
always  as  through  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  the 
mediator  of  all  finite  action  and  progress,  physical,  intellectual,  and 
spiritual.  The  Christ  of  history,  as  well  as  the  Christ  within  us, 
passes  through  the  phases  of  human  progress  by  the  Holy  Spirit. 
The  likeness  is  striking.  Christ  is  born  through  the  action  of  the 
Spirit,  and  so  are  we.  The  Holy  Spirit  abides  in  both  alike.  The 

41 


42  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

Father  seals  the  Son  by  the  descent  of  the  Spirit  at  the  time  of 
baptism;  and  has  also  sealed  us  giving  us  the  earnest  of  the 
Spirit.  The  Spirit  is  Christ's  anointing,  so  also  is  he  ours.  Jesus 
was  led  by  the  Spirit,  and  so  also  as  many  as  are  led  by  the  Spirit 
of  God,  they  are  the  sons  of  God.  Jesus  rejoices  in  the  Spirit, 
and  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit  in  believers  is  joy.  Jesus  even  performed 
miracles,  not  by  the  inherent  power  that  is  supposed  to  dwell  in 
the  Word  made  flesh,  but  by  the  Spirit  of  God ;  it  is  also  after  the 
Spirit  is  come  that  we  can  ask  anything  in  Christ's  name  and  he 
will  do  it  for  us.  Jesus  returned  from  the  Jordan  "full  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,"  and  the  disciples  were  filled  with  the  Spirit  to  fit  them 
for  their  various  activities.  Jesus  is  declared  to  be  the  Son  of 
God  with  power  according  to  the  Spirit  of  holiness;  "but  if  the 
Spirit  of  him  that  raised  up  Jesus  from  the  dead  dwelleth  in  you, 
he  that  raised  up  Christ  Jesus  from  the  dead  shall  also  quicken 
your  mortal  bodies  through  his  Spirit  that  dwelleth  in  you." 

Thus  the  Holy  Spirit  was  to  Jesus  what  he  is  to  us,  being  the 
principle  of  personal  life  for  both,  and  accomplishing  in  us  all  that 
he  accomplished  in  Christ.  By  the  descent  of  the  Spirit  upon 
Christ,  he  is  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  that  is,  ethically  one 
with  God;  in  like  manner  as  many  as  are  led  by  the  spirit  of  God, 
they  are  the  sons  of  God. 

What  then,  is  the  relation  of  Jesus  to  believers  in  this  process, 
and  in  what  way  is  Jesus  the  source  of  our  own  spiritual  life 
through  the  Spirit?  One  answer  to  these  questions  is  an  appeal 
to  the  constitution  of  the  immanent  Trinity.  Unfortunately,  there 
are  no  commonly  accepted  views  as  to  the  internal  relations  of  the 
members  of  the  Godhead,  and  an  independent  discussion  would 
become  a  previous  question  to  the  present  consideration.  One 
must  agree  with  Dorner  in  saying  that  "It  may  be  asserted  that 
our  age  especially  needs  a  living  renascence  of  the  apprehension  of 
a  triune  God,  and  indeed  a  new  formulation  of  the  concept  of  God 
generally  by  means  of  that  renascence."  The  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  is  not  yet  complete,  and  yet  the  doctrine  is  necessary  in 
opposing  all  unworthy  views  of  God,  and  in  furnishing  an  ade- 
quate foundation  for  the  doctrine  of  redemption. 

However,  no  view  of  the  immanent  Trinity  would  be  of  value 
in  the  present  discussion,  except  as  it  affected  the  theory  of  the 
incarnate  life  of  the  Logos.  If,  for  example,  the  Spirit  is  the 


JESUS   AND   THE   HOLY   SPIRIT  43 

very  condition  of  the  personal  self-conscious  life  of  God,  then  the 
office  of  the  Spirit  in  the  life  of  God  might  be  considered  analogous 
to  the  similar  work  as  performed  in  the  person  of  Christ,  and  as 
far  as  the  new  regenerate  personality  is  concerned,  in  believers. 
President  Strong  says,  "Christ  represents  the  centrifugal  action  of 
the  deity,  but  there  must  be  a  centripetal  action  also.  In  the  Holy 
Spirit  the  movement  is  completed  and  the  divine  activity  and 
thought  returns  into  itself."  If  this  view  were  to  be  accepted,  the 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  Christ  and  in  believers  could  be  con- 
sidered a  part  of  the  same  great  process,  having  its  origin  in  the 
eternal  relationship  of  the  Godhead. 

Athanasius  was  right  when  he  wrote  the  following: 

God  calls  men,  who  are  created,  sons,  as  though  they  had  been  begotten. 
As  they  are  created  natures,  they  can  only  become  sons  by  receiving  the 
Spirit  of  him  who  is  by  nature  and  truly  Son.  He  who  was  our  creator, 
becomes  our  Father,  from  which  it  is  clear  that  we  are  not  by  nature  sons 
but  the  Son  who  is  in  us.  Nor  is  God  by  nature  our  Father,  but  the  Father  of 
the  Word,  which  is  in  us.  But  the  Father  designates  those  sons  in  whom 
he  sees  his  Son. 

The  Spirit  is  not  simply  a  companion  of  the  human  soul,  in- 
dwelling as  a  separate  principle.  Our  spiritual  nature  is  a  new 
life-organization  brought  about  by  the  Holy  Spirit.  But  this  new 
nature  is  vitally  united  with  that  of  Christ.  Christ  is  reborn  in 
every  individual  in  whom  the  Holy  Spirit  takes  up  his  abode. 
Truly  it  seems  to  be  the  meaning  of  I  Cor.  12:12,  the  church  is 
"the  Christ."  Christ  is  the  head  of  which  the  church  is  the  body, 
and  by  one  Spirit  are  we  all  baptized  into  this  one  body.  The  body 
of  Christ  perpetuates  the  union  of  humanity  with  the  Godhead. 

Yet  this  union  with  Christ  through  the  Spirit  does  not  destroy 
the  personality.  One  cannot  say  as  did  one  of  Weigel's  followers 
to  another:  "I  am  Christ  Jesus,  the  living  Word  of  God;  I  have 
redeemed  thee  by  my  sinless  sufferings."  Each  man  is  a  free 
personality  who  by  virtue  of  his  faith  in  Christ  is  a  reincarnation. 
The  Christ-life  is  not  subversive  to  the  highest  personality,  since 
by  the  action  of  the  Spirit  the  bond  between  Christ  and  the  soul 
is  spontaneous  and  reciprocal. 

Nevertheless,  the  new  species  of  life  as  represented  in  the  body 
of  Christ  could  never  have  received  its  origination  outside  of 
Christ.  The  Spirit's  organizing  power  must  first  be  found  in  an 
individual,  that  is,  Christ;  and  from  this  source  the  divine  life 


44  THE   INCARNATION   AND   MODERN   THOUGHT 

flows  to  the  world.  There  must  be  a  dynamic  source  of  the 
regenerated  personal  life  in  humanity,  and  that  source  is  Christ. 
Such  is  the  evolutionary  phase  of  the  Incarnation  that  Christ  is 
the  first  of  a  new  type  from  which  the  successive  individuals  spring ; 
the  firstborn  among  many  brethren.  This  is  the  purpose  of  the 
Incarnation,  to  establish  a  focus  of  the  new  human  life,  for  a 
higher  order  of  created  beings.  Without  Christ,  therefore,  God 
could  not  have  saved  the  world.  Faith  is  the  contact  whereby  the 
Spirit  ingrafts  us  into  the  Son,  that  from  him  as  the  vine  we  as  the 
branches  may  receive  sustenance.  "Jesus  is  the  object  to  be 
assimilated,  the  Spirit  is  the  assimilating  power."  Thus  is  it  ever 
true — "A  man  may  become  a  God-like  man,  but  never  a  God-man; 
this  last,  Christ  alone  remains." 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 
LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


RHC'P 


MM    51958 


LD  21A-50m-8, 
(C8481slO)476 


